A sale of signs and artworks which adorned the walls of collapsed investment bank Lehman Brothers started with a bang today as the first lots sold for way over their estimated prices.
A metal Lehman Brothers sign which hung outside its European headquarters in London sold for £42,050 sterling (€50,000) to an anonymous telephone bidder, prompting gasps in the sale room at Christie's in London.
The price, which included the buyers' premium, was around 12 times its estimate of £3,000 and came after a bidding war with an Internet bidder from China.
Another sign commemorating Britain's former prime minister Gordon Brown opening the building when he was finance minister in 2004 fetched £28,750 with buyers' premium, way above its estimated price of up to £1,500.
Lehman collapsed in 2008, a key event in the global financial turmoil which reached its peak that year.
The auction of some 300 items was ordered by administrators PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) who hope to raise around £2m for creditors. But however much the sale raises, it will make only a tiny dent in the more than $600 billion which Lehman owes.
Another sale of items from Lehman's US operation raised over $12m at Sotheby's in New York over the weekend.
Other lots for today's auction include paintings by artists including Lucian Freud and Anthony Gormley, sets of leather-bound books of Shakespeare and Charles Dickens and contemporary photographs.
