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INSTANT VIEW: Lehman sees $2.8 bln loss and to raise $6 bln

NEW YORK
Mon Jun 9, 2008 9:00am EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc on Monday forecast a quarterly loss of $2.8 billion, hurt by losses related to trading and hedging, and said it plans to raise $6 billion in capital.

Deals

Shortly after the news, Moody's changed Lehman's rating outlook to negative.

Lehman Brothers shares slid about 10 percent before the bell on Monday. The stock last traded at $29 after closing Friday at $32.29.

COMMENTS:

CHRIS IGGO, A STRATEGIST AT AXA INVESTMENT MANAGERS

"The markets are very jittery at the moment anyway. The credit crunch is still with us and reverberating. We might see, both in equities and fixed income, a high level of volatility over the next few weeks going through the summer. You've got economic growth slowing, still these financial losses from the banking sector and inflation and central banks shifting their biases it doesn't make for a positive combination of fundamentals.

"It's the lack of transparency and that's been with us since last August. Most investors don't have any way of knowing what is out there, in terms of bad debt and losses to the banks. The closer it got to the Lehman announcement, the less surprising it's become that they have to come to the market to raise money and they have got stuff that needs to be written down.

"The fact that they're doing it and they still have problems on their balance sheet is no great surprise, but what it means is that the backdrop is still unfavorable. That, along with some of the macro things that are happening inflation, ECB interest rates -- you can't see equities doing particularly well in that environment and I would expect us to see further losses over the summer."

MARK PRIEST, A SENIOR TRADER AT TRADINDEX.

"(The results are) Bad. however, the market had expected them not to be great. Those who thought the credit crunch was over are clearly wrong."

JEREMY BATSTONE-CARR, HEAD OF PRIVATE CLIENT RESEARCH AT CHARLES STANLEY

"It would raise concerns regarding another round in the credit crisis and perhaps encourage people, who felt that the credit crisis is was out of the way, to think again as we come to the banks' second-quarter reporting season."

"There is a general sense of uncertainty as we head into the second-quarter reporting season. Overall sentiment is fragile."

ANGUS CAMPBELL, HEAD OF SALES AT CAPITAL SPREADS

"They came in worse than expected. Obviously what we are seeing in Europe at the moment is a bit of sell off in that financials. That drags many indexes into negative territory. Financials have been under quite a lot of stress and strain recently.

"But we're still expecting the Dow to open higher ... following a big sell off on Friday."

"It's not all gloom and doom, but certainly not brilliance from Lehman, not a very good start to the week."

PETER BOOCKVAR, EQUITY STRATEGIST, MILLER TABAK & CO. IN NEW YORK

"While people, I think, were expecting a difficult quarter and a capital raise, it was obviously a tougher quarter and the capital raise was a little more than people expected. The stock is trading down, but this is not a big surprise which is why the futures are somewhat ignoring it."

(Reporting by Atul Prakash, Dominic Lau and Michael Taylor in London and Kristina Cooke in New York)

(Compiled by Edward Tobin)



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