Monday 15 September 2008

Lehman Bankruptcy - Scenes from IT Ops

I was onsite at a bank today and the IT Operations was slightly more busy than usual due to the demise of Lehman. So what happens when a bank's counterparty fails? Heres' a brief insight from the IT perspective:

a. They stop all payments sent out to Lehman - via their payment systems, SWIFT, CLS, etc.
b. They start filtering out Lehman trades in their P&L reports or meddle with the reports to reflect restructuring fees

There was relatively calm across the department as they appeared ready for this eventuality and were reporting back to work day before yesterday. Not exactly sure what's happening in their trading desks or the risk departments, must be quite a scene ;-)