Some time prior to Bear Stearns collapsing somebody said "they souldnt touch BS with a barge pole!". We saw how true that was.Are there enough parallels with Lehman now and would you say the same for them. The same high degree of leverage with a non-diversified presence. Is there any point interviewing with Lehman?thanks.

Could be...But imagine your utility is enhanced by making others think you have a superior handle on what is going on.You can say this about Lehman/Barcap/BNP/Commerz/ABN, and if you are wrong, then no one remembers, if you are lucky and right, your image can be enhanced.I'm worried that you even think of not interviewing with Lehman, regardless of how good you are.There is of course some chance they will blow up in a way that causes them to screw with you.But unless you have a pocket full of offers from other big firms, you'd be foolish to turn down an interview with them.The time to decide about Lehman is after they offer a job. It may end up being your only decent offer, and of course you will know more then than now.

I know Lehman hires a lot of people who are good at signal filtration. Specifically, filters which remove any possibility of going down from a price series, and which can thereby extract a riskless buy signal from any set of points. If this sounds like the type of work you would be good at, then submit your resume.

Well, ive always been of the opinion of having options in ones hands, hence i agree with you Dominic. The "is there any point interviewing" was just an expression, the main question being how bad is it for Lehman.I mean they have some great people, but it is a testing time for their business model. Infact its a tussle between 2 contrasting business models, the ultra diversified behemoth Citi, and the focussed Lehman (and a few others).

Lehman is inherrently a risk adverse firm. Why is there focus on Lehman at the moment - they announced a 2.8bn loss - but a host of "focused" other Broker Dealer announced more / worse results. The only surprise on the street was that they didn't announce earlier - it was unlikely that a traditional FI house would get away with the losses they were talking about - unless they were GS, and even thye haven't managed to escape as much as everyone first thought.It can always get worse at Lehman, but then again it can also get much better - the share price has taking a beating in the last few weeks and looks undervalued to me. They also made some swift steps to correct any issues - moving Callan out made a clear signal that they felt they had to do something pretty drastic - Lowitt is a respected guy within the firm. They are making clear signals that they want to improve things, change them round and make them better. This is very similar to how other firms reacted to a greater or lesser degree. BS was very slightly different in terms of their Hedge Fund going down about this time last year and they were having problems raising capital (if I recall correctly) so it took a good 9 months for them to come crashing down and they didn't take much public preventitive action.Citi is diverisfied, but then it also has masssive issues due to that - the main one being ineffeciency. To compare with GS being a prop-shop - there earnings are highly correlated with the outright risk they take - and hence not very diversfied at all.