Bloomberg said in a report that Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc has requested a judge to approve its $767 million settlement it has offered with Freddie Mac, or the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, regarding a $1.2 billion bankruptcy claim. The news agency said the Freddie Mac claim is among the biggest claims remaining against the now shuttered bank.
In a US Bankruptcy Court filing in New York, Lehman said that the deal it had extended with the government-controlled company will enable the prompt distribution of hundreds of millions of dollars to creditors currently in reserve as a result of the latter's dispute. Bloomberg said the dispute was Freddie Mac's strategy to prioritize its claim against Lehman among other creditors.
On January 31st, Lehman won a court approval of a similar deal with another government-controlled company, Fannie Mae or the Federal National Mortgage Association. The mortgage company reportedly agreed on a $2.15 billion settlement with Lehman over a $18.9 billion claim against the former Wall Street bank. Bloomberg said the accords reached with both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae will accelerate creditor payments more than five years after Lehman filed the biggest bankruptcy in the US at the peak of the 2008 financial crisis.
In the same year, Freddie Mac had filed a claim over a loan it has provided to the New York-based bank, of which the latter never repaid as a result of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing, the news agency said. The accord reached by all three companies would require Fannie Mae to turn over information and documents that would allow an administrator to file lawsuits against third-party mortgage originators and sellers over alleged breaches of representations and warranties that were made to Lehman, based on a court filing around that time.
Bloomberg said Lehman filed for bankruptcy protection in September almost six years ago. In March 2012, a Chapter 11 plan for units other than the bank's brokerage unit was implemented.
