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Just after Lehman Brothers collapsed, there was talk that Wall Street would cease to be perceived as the center of the global financial universe. But now, a year later, The World’s Jason Margolis finds that there is life in an on Wall Street yet.

• Global recession timeline
• Best of the BBC: The Day that Lehman Died
• The World’s Global Economy Podcast

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH Boston. Almost a year ago today this was the news.

NEWS ANCHOR: Coming up in the next 60 minutes the major US investment bank, Lehman Brothers, goes bankrupt. It’s a financial earthquake on Wall Street.

WERMAN: The collapse of Lehman Brothers on September 15^th 2008 touched off a global chain of events. It lead the world into a deep financial crisis. But as The World’s Laura Lynch reports it also created some intensely personal dramas especially for one young man in London.

LAURA LYNCH: The day that shook the financial world was also the day that the bottom fell out of Edouard d’Archimbaud’s life. Today in front of what was Lehman’s Brothers London offices in Canary Wharf the atmosphere is calm as cars and busses drives past, as office workers come and go. But one year ago when d’Archimbaud arrived here for his very first day of work as a trader the 24-year-old French man saw a very different scene.

EDOUARD D’ARCHIMBAUD: So I arrived in front of the Lehman Brother’s building and there were a lot of journalists and some policemen. It was very strange.

LYNCH: D’Archimbaud wasn’t certain what all the fuss was about until he went inside and read the newspaper headlines in the lobby. He didn’t even make it to his desk before he lost his job.

D’ARCHIMBAUD: I knew the situation but in my opinion it was impossible that such a big company could fail into bankruptcy so my first reaction was the surprise.

LYNCH: And after that he went out drinking with his friends and tried to figure out what to do next. Two days later d’Archimbaud went home to Paris. It took several weeks for him to find work with a brokerage and he tried to get over the life he was looking forward to in London but a few days ago he left that secure job to work with two friends on a new business start-up. He says it’s a natural step for a few reasons.

D’ARCHIMBAUD: The first is one is partly because it’s a dream for me to have my own business. A second reason could be that I don’t want to stay in a company just because it’s comfortable.

LYNCH: The company he’s now part of has developed software that forecasts demands for new products. It’s supposed to save companies money by reducing their risk when they market their wares. But starting up a new business, especially in the current economic environment, is a risky venture in itself. D’archimbaud acknowledges that but he says the harsh experience at the doorstep of Lehman Brothers a year ago has taught him a lot about taking chances.

D’ARCHIMBAUD: In the mind of a lot of people if you work for a small company there is a big risk of going bankrupt. But we saw with Lehman Brothers that it was also the case for big companies.

LYNCH: In the past year D’Archimbaud received other offers from headhunters in London to work at banks and investment firms. He’s turned them all down. He’s still in touch with the people he was supposed to work with at Lehman’s. They all act as a kind of support group. The day before yesterday he got one message that made him smile.

D’ARCHIMBAUD: I received an e-mail from my boss in Lehman Brothers. He was congratulating me for this new project.

LYNCH: His old boss is still working here at Canary Wharf in London at another bank. D’Archimbaud plans to spend the actual anniversary of Lehman’s collapse working on his new venture not thinking about the career and the life that began and ended on the same day one year ago. For The World I’m Laura Lynch in Canary Wharf in London.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• Listen to the BBC Business Daily interview

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Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: When people aren’t working people aren’t spending. And when people aren’t spending people aren’t selling. These facts of life are all too obvious in today’s art market. The BBC’s art correspondent Lawrence Pollard in London prepared this report.

AUCTIONEER: Good evening ladies and gentlemen and a warm welcome to Sotheby’s and this historic sale … .

LAWRENCE POLLARD: In September last year one of the most successful contemporary art auctions of all time took place. Artist Damien Hurst sold $200 million worth of art all in one go. The art market had never seen a boom like it. And strangely it was on the very same day that this was the top story in the news.

NEWS ANNOUNCER: The decision by Lehman Brothers to file for bankruptcy late last night sent shockwaves around the globe.

POLLARD: Slowly the art market followed all other markets into a collapse – especially the type of art beloved of bankers; the cutting edge trendy stuff called post-war contemporary.

GEORGINA ADAM: We’ve seen paintings go for half of what they’d fetched a few years ago.

POLLARD: Georgina Adam is art market editor for the Art Newspaper and the Financial Times.

ADAM: Sotheby’s and Christies reported drops of 50%, 60%, even 70% compared to the previous year. Particularly the market for post-war and contemporary art has really seen a massive drop. It had a great appeal to people with a lot of money, people with new money, and that really is the part of the art market that has been hit the most. It has dropped catastrophically really. The sales have turned in totals that were perhaps 20% or 30% of the totals that were made a year ago.

POLLARD: Banking and art have always gone together like love and marriage. For example, there is the Robert Lehman collection in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. The former CEO of Lehman’s, Richard Fuld, was a respected art collector. His wife, Kathy Fuld, was a trustee of the Museum of Modern Art. Together they sold $13 million worth of art just a few months ago. And of course Lehman’s had its own corporate collection. Now just as you can buy Lehman’s baseball caps and pens on E-bay soon you’ll find part of the Lehman art collection for sale.

ANN HENRY: Roy Lichtenstein, Louise Bourgeois, David Hockney, [PH] Bernise Abbot … .

POLLARD: Ann Henry is from Freeman’s Auctioneers in Philadelphia where the art, or some of it, is to be sold in a few weeks time for, it’s hoped, over a million dollars.

HENRY: Everything was hanging in various Lehman Brothers’ offices in New York, Boston, and Delaware. The stuff in the corridor; the stuff in the board room; individual offices. The company had a very important significance in the history of our country and I think their collection reflects that.

POLLARD: Not all the collection is being sold. Neither Lehman’s, the liquidators, nor their art consultant would give us an interview so we don’t which pieces are being kept back. But we presume it’s in the hope that the market will pick up in the future. Because as Georgina Adam points out this is a bad time to hold a sale.

ADAM: As with all assets when you have to sell it’s not worth as much as was when you bought it. And then of course when the hard times come, all of a sudden it’s sort of looked at as an asset and something that can be realized to make some money.

POLLARD: However recent events can also add interest. Coming up for sale is a print of the New York Stock Exchange. The print used to belong to Lehman Brother’s who caused the stock exchange to crash so who wouldn’t enjoy that irony up on their wall?

HENRY: That will be interesting to see. I’m curious to see the result of that as well. I think we’ve had a tremendous amount of interest in the sale already from a lot of people in the finance industry. So I’m very curious to see what prints of this theme do in the sale.

POLLARD: Ann Henry of Freeman’s Auctioneers and the auctions of Lehman’s art begin on the first of November. For The World I’m Lawrence Pollard in London.

WERMAN: The BBC is running a special series of reports this week looking at how people across the globe are fairing one year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. You can find out more about that series at The World dot org. Look for our best of the BBC section on the homepage.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.