Barclays had no idea how big Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc’s futures-and-options trading business was when it considered taking over the defunct bank’s derivatives trades at exchanges in 2008, a Barclays executive said. “Lehman’s books were in such a mess that I don’t think they knew where they were,” Elizabeth James, a director of Barclays’s futures business, testified today in US Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan

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She said Lehman’s lack of records initially prevented her from performing “due diligence” to discover what Lehman’s and its customers’ positions were, where Lehman kept its bank accounts, and who its brokers were.

Read more: Sydney Morning Herald  August 31, 2010