On Monday, the following story broke on Reuters:
If Lehman wins the lawsuit, we take the $1.4 billion judgment, divide it by the 183.3 million outstanding shares, and come up with a hit to shareholders of a whopping $7.64/share in value that has been wiped out.The day the news hit, Monday, November 28, 2011, AGO’s closing price was $9.43. If we subtract $7.64 from that number, we get a new value of only $1.79.
Wow. That’s stunning, and no one seems to be talking about this.
In trying to understand the disputed Lehman deal, I ran across this article regarding another of Lehman’s disputed deals:
“Derivatives represent a significant source of cash for Lehman creditors still waiting to get paid more than three years after the investment bank filed for bankruptcy protection on Sept. 15, 2008.
“At the time of its collapse, Lehman was a party to more than 1.2 million derivatives transactions with 6,500 counterparties according to court documents. The team working on unwinding the deals had recovered, through the end of last year, more than $12 billion in cash for the benefit of creditors.”
What does this mean to option traders?
If the facts starting coming out on this lawsuit in Lehman’s favor, this is a potential catastrophic hit to AGO shareholders. Puts on AGO might be a good choice, both for short term and longer term trades.