22. Lehman Brothers
Year: 2008
Approx. Amount: $600+ Billion*
Company / Person Involved: Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.
It’s not very often that companies that have been around for more than a century file for bankruptcy, but that’s probably because there are not many companies left that have been around for 100+ years. In 2008, with approximately 25,000 employees and close to $600 billion in bank debt, after 158 years in business, the Lehman investment bank filed for Chapter 11 and sent the business world scrambling.
Lehman Brothers ©Oli Scarff / Gettyimages.com
At the time that Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, the company had approximately $639 billion in assets, and although no charges have been filed against the company as of yet, a bankruptcy examiner from the case was suspicious of fraud on the part of the company’s top execs as well as Ernst &Young, Lehman Brothers’ auditor.