Life After Lehman

It’s around three weeks now… but it all seems so long…

15^th September… Monday, the day when the great Lehman Brothers filed for chapter 11… In the India office day began as usual. For past two weeks stocks were tumbling but we were hopeful that we could survive. From USD 16 it came down to 14…. 8… then finally in the range of 4… in the end we saw it touching 0.7 in the pre market rates… L

We were sure that on Friday management was in search of a buyer… and on Monday we would get some concrete news… but instead the news of bankruptcy came in. All operations were suspended… for the first time in life I was in office with no work officially. I was never “on bench” throughout my career and never expected to be on this special kind of bench.

Whole office was suddenly full of uncertainty… what will happen to jobs… will there be mass layoffs… or maybe we will be in same office but wearing new ID’s… nothing was sure…

All the people who till 2 days before were busy completing daily tasks were suddenly moving all their personal belongings from the office. And news and images of people from new York and London offices moving out with belongings and all made everyone think that there was no future left.

Discussing with colleagues across the oceans only added to the panic…

All of a sudden everyone was in doubt. And when even senior management finally started asking us to prepare plan B, everyone went into a panic mode. All of a sudden everyone started applying everywhere. Of course everyone out there in the job market was aware of this and all the vultures out there in the job market were ready to grab whatever they could as cheaply as they could….

One of the major reasons was the very high salaries of Lehman. Many employees had financial commitments like home loans that were in proportion to their current salaries. The very prospect of job loss brought with it grinding worries about how to meet those obligations. And that was one of the major reasons that made people search frantically for new jobs.

Now to add to the trouble, service sector companies that were also facing the heat of the American meltdown, started layoffs in thousands… so all of a sudden job market was flooded…

Soon “Lehman special” walk ins were arranged by many companies… and people who were not sure what to do next started flocking there… companies knew that we were cornered and would come over without much salary negotiations. They were not at all discussing salaries… they would interview people and then just say that “we would let you know later”… even when interviews went too good… then also they would not release offers….

Everyone was waiting for a final collapse so that when we would officially become jobless they could take us on their terms. Some of us had even 4 “verbal offers” with no official offer letter.

Soon the news of Barclays taking over Lehman’s North American operations came over… the news of saved jobs kindled hopes. People were now a little composed… interviews reduced. Many decided to wait and watch. Still there were doubts since no one had taken over Indian operations… and to the ultimate question was still unanswered.

The fact that Barclays had given only three month guarantee to US employees did little to assure Indian employees who were accustomed to “permanent” jobs. So the atmosphere of doubt still remained.

Soon Barclays people were in India to access the office. Senior management was very happy with their feedback and were very much sure that they were going to take over but talks failed and again it was back to square one. Now people started getting anxious and started putting down papers. In order to stop the exodus management started enforcing one month contractual notice period.

In the background there were news of Credit Suisse and Nomura were also in contact with management for tasking over the Powai unit.

Finally few days ago management’s efforts bore fruits and there was announcements that Powai unit was being taken over by Nomura Holdings Inc. of Japan. The best thing they did was to guarantee no job cuts and no salary cuts. This put to rest all the speculations and the good mood is back again in the office.

On 3^rd we got internal news that Nomura has taken us over…

On 6^th the one of the Nomura board members addressed the Powai unit and welcomed everyone onboard Nomura…

On 10th we are supposed to get our official employment contracts from Nomura.

A new era has begun…