SCMP:Three in eight minibond buyershave taken banks' buy-back offer

22 Aug 2009

Three in eight buyers of Lehman Brothers minibonds have accepted an offer by 16 banks to buy them back in the two weeks since the offer opened, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority said yesterday. Peter Chan Kwong-yue, chairman of a group of aggrieved investors, is not surprised.

It is 11 months since the US investment bank collapsed amid the global credit crisis and many of the investors wanted a resolution, Mr Chan said. "It makes sense that the Hong Kong Monetary Authority wants to put pressure on the remaining investors to quickly take up the offer as well."

A spokesman for the authority said investors needed to "consider carefully the terms of the offer and his or her personal circumstances" in deciding whether or not to accept the offer.

The 9,219 investors who have agreed to sell their minibonds to the banks from which they bought them will get back 60 to 70 per cent of their initial investment depending on their age, and may get more depending on the residual value of the assets underlying the minibonds.

Despite their name, minibonds are not corporate bonds but complex, credit-linked derivatives whose value depends on the performance of their underlying assets.

Investors claim banks marketed them as proxy investments in well-known companies and failed to explain the investment risk.

"The HKMA is just using the fact that so many people accepted the offer to get the rest of us to accept and swiftly close the whole issue. It's outrageous," he said.

More than 20,000 investors complained about the vendor banks and brokerages to the Monetary Authority and the Securities and Futures Commission, which have begun taking action. Of 21,635 complaints the authority has received, it has dismissed 1,851, is seeking more information on 11,853 and is currently investigating 6,346.

The SFC has won a court order for Lehman Brothers Asia to hand over 17 internal documents as part of its investigations. Lehman Brothers Asia is in liquidation.

The commission issued a notice to the investment bank on October 31 requiring the surrender of the documents. But the bank refused, claiming the documents involved confidential information about dealings between lawyers and clients.