Lehman Brothers Holdings is hoping to take Archstone public after a highly publicized battle with Sam Zell for control of the firm.
The Englewood, Colo.-based Archstone filed for a $100 million initial public offering (IPO) that industry watchers believe will occur late this year or early next year. But the IPO is expected to be worth much more than $100 million, which is just a placeholder used to help calculate fees.
The embattled Lehman, which exited bankruptcy in March, took over Archstone in May after paying former shareholders Bank of America and Barclays about $3 billion for the remaining 53 percent of the firm. Bank of America and Barclays had attempted to sell Archstone to Zell.
Lehman, along with Tishman Speyer Properties, bought Archstone for $22.2 billion in October 2007. Over at Reuters, Agnes Crane writes that the deal makes Lehman look "only mostly wrong," in that the company may yet recoup the lofty price it paid five years ago. But the debt that Lehman took on to close the deal was one of the factors that helped sink the company in the first place.
