We know that issuers of Lehman's credit default swaps will have to pay out hundreds of billions of dollars. But who will actually have to pay that out?
The Times of London writes today:
"About 350 banks and investors are thought to have insured an estimated $400 billion of Lehman’s debt through complex derivatives, known as credit default swaps. These include Pacific Investment Management, the manager of the world’s largest bond fund, Citadel, the US hedge fund, and American International Group, the insurer that the US Government recently bailed out with two loans totalling about $123 billion."
In addition, JP Morgan gave the following chart of European banks' counterparty risk on Lehman a couple of weeks ago:
The Royal Bank of Scotland probably also got creamed. An article in the Guardian states:
"[An analyst] singled out Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland as being most exposed among the UK banks to the credit derivatives market. Both have bought and sold, in roughly equal measure, £2.4 trillion of such contracts. [He] believes Barclays and RBS are highly likely to be prominent among those required to pay out on Lehman CDSs."Hedge funds also got creamed.
And probably some of the big American banks and investment houses (like JP Morgan, Citi and Bank of America) and insurers with CDS exposure listed here also got nailed.
Some sovereign wealth funds may have also taken a hit.
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