Lehman Brothers is Bankrupt, ML sold to BoA for $50bn, BoE injects £5bn into markets, Two of the World's Biggest Banks Gone in One Day

BoA purchased ML on Sunday, and early Monday morning 158-year old LEH filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The sudden and shocking demise of Lehman Brothers followed soon after Barclays and Bank of America pulled their interest in a possible takeover. Both bidders had something up their sleeve - BoA merged with ML and Barclays seemed to be waiting for the business to collapse before cherry-picking select businesses at bargain basement prices. Pictures of Lehman's staff bearing "Iron Mountain" boxes littered the news channels and newspapers. Some time later, prior to a G-7 meeting in Washington when the aftermath of Lehman's collapse became readily apparent, French economy minister Christine Lagarde remarked: "For the equilibrium of the world financial system, this was a genuine error...once we let one domino fall, the rest risk collapsing".

Now GS and MS are left as Wall Street's biggest investment banks.

In the UK the Bank of England auctioned £5bn through an exceptional fine tuning open market operation at 9.45 Monday. These loans will mature Thursday. (BoE stated they received £24.1bn in bids for its £5bn injection).

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"The ECB stands ready to contribute to orderly conditions in the euro money market" - ECB

"I've been in the business 35 years and these are the most extraordinary events I have seen." - Peter G Peterson, Blackstone Group