Lehman Bros. Paintings Fetch $12.3M for Creditors

Sotheby's auctions art from collapsed banking giant
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 25, 2010 9:37 PM CDT
Lehman Bros. Paintings Fetch $12.3M for Creditors
This picture provided by Sotheby's shows an untitled 2001 work by Julie Mehretu. It sold for $1 million.   (AP Photo/Sotheby's)

They're going to need a lot more paintings: Lehman Bros. raised $12.3 million tonight at Sotheby's by selling off artwork it picked up during its golden run on Wall Street, reports BBC. It's good news for Lehman's many creditors, but not great news considering the collapsed investment bank owes hundreds of billions. Lehman's has another auction next week, this time at Christie's.

The Sotheby's sales actually exceeded expectations, notes LindsayPollack.com. Of the 142 lots, 83% found buyers. The top seller was Julie Mehretu's Untitled 1, which went to a private bidder for a little more than $1 million, while Liu Ye’s The Long Way Home went for $962,500. Both sold for significantly higher than expected. One of the unlucky ones was Damien Hirst's We've Got Style. Expected to be top dog at up to $1.2 million, it opened at $200,000 and found zero takers.
(More Lehman Brothers stories.)

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