Lehman Brothers needs billions

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Renita Jablonski: Lehman Brothers is about to report its first ever quarterly loss. The Wall Street Journal is also saying the bank will need billions of dollars of extra capital to beef up its balance sheet. Stephen Beard has more.

Stephen Beard: Lehman’s results are not due out until the week after next. But analysts have already fgured out the numbers. And they are not pretty. It’s thought the bank could lose well over $300 million …nd need a fresh capital injection of $4 billion.

Mortgages are the main problem. And Lehman’s not alone. Among other international banks there’a been a flurry of profit warnings and other problems lately. That’s a setback for the more upbeat mood of recent weeks.

Jeff Goldfarb is with the financial website Breaking Views.

Goldfarb: We’ve seen some optimisim of late from bank CEO’s saying the worst may be behind us but this latest bout of news really seems to indicate that the bottom may not yet in sight.

He says as the credit crunch hits the real economy that is feeding back into the source of the problem: the banks.

In London, this is Stephen Beard for Marketplace.