Came across an entertaining little article that I think illustrates the challenges facing banks in the current environment.According to Bloomberg, the now-bankrupt Lehman Brothers has an extremely pricey but hard to value asset on it's balance sheet - enough uranium cake to make an nuclear weapon. Apparently they entered into the highly restricted (and lucrative) market for weapons-grade nuclear material shortly before their collapse.
Now that the short list of potential buyers knows that a bankrupt firm is sitting on a decent chunk of it, the market has effectively collapsed.
According to Bloomberg:
Lehman “tested” the uranium market after its bankruptcy filing in an effort to raise cash, pulling back after it did because “everyone was low balling,” Marsal said. With $10 billion in the till today from other asset sales, Lehman isn’t in a hurry any longer to sell uranium, he said.Sound very much like the problem with banks and sub-prime mortgages?
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