I’ll fly away: Lehman sells off its last Gulfstream jet
Since Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy more than a year ago, the securities firm has sold two Gulfstream IVs, a Dassault Falcon 50 and a Sikorsky chopper. Lehman parked the jets at the Westchester County Airport in White Plains, New York, a convenient locale for its former chief executive Richard Fuld, who lives in nearby Greenwich, Connecticutt.
Over the years, the planes took Fuld and his team to many far-flung locations; one was used to fly Lehman executives to South Korea during its unsuccessful attempt in 2008 to find a buyer for the company. On the March weekend that Bear Stearns crumbled, Fuld was on one, heading to India to meet clients. The planes also flew Fuld to his homes in Jupiter, Florida, and Sun Valley, Idaho.
The restructuring gurus at Alvarez & Marsal continue to wind down Lehman, as they sell assets to pay back creditors of the collapsed securities firm. While A&M has wrestled with Lehman’s morass of real-estate assets and millions of derivatives contracts, they also have had a higher-class problem on their hands: Lehman’s prodigious private jet and fine art collection.
This month, Lehman sold the last of its corporate aircraft, a Gulfstream 550 that it bought for about $40m (€27m) in 2006, when the firm was flying high. Sadly, Lehman never got to use the luxe aircraft, which it purchased so the firm’s executives could travel nonstop to Asia.
Lehman raised almost $90m from selling the planes and helicopter, or roughly 97 cents to the dollar of their book value, defined as purchase price less depreciation.
“Given the difficult environment for selling assets, the estate is very pleased with our progress,” said a Lehman spokeswoman.
The next Lehman luxury item on the block: A 283-lot collection of contemporary paintings, prints and drawings that hung in the company’s offices. On Nov 1, Freeman’s Auctioneers of Philadelphia, a house specializing in corporate collections, will auction off the first part of the collection, which includes works by Robert Rauschenberg, Alexander Calder and Jim Dine. All told, the collection is expected to fetch $1m.
--Write to Peter Lattman at peter.lattman@wsj.com and Susanne Craig at susanne.craig@wsj.com
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