LONDON, Dec. 22 (UPI) -- Collapsed investment bank Lehman Brothers is still hiring and can still hand out bonus checks this year, a bankruptcy court in New York said.
A judge has given administrators permission to spend $50 million in bonus pay for 230 traders who are reconciling Lehman Brothers accounts as the company unwinds a $10 billion portfolio, The Financial Times reported Tuesday.
In addition, Lehman Brothers, which collapsed at the height of the financial crisis a year ago, is hiring in Europe, seeking staff that can help it dismantle its accounts.
"We've made our strategy and reasoning clear to our creditors," said Steven Pearson, one of four court administrators in Europe overseeing the bank's final transactions.
About 2,800 of Lehman Brother's former staff members transferred to Nomura, a Japanese bank that bought its equity division. About 1,000 were laid off, while another 1,000 found other jobs.
But the Lehman Brothers still had to sort through millions of transactions and square accounts worth hundreds of millions of dollars, the Times reported.
