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Investors
SIPC steps in when a brokerage firm fails financially, and assets are missing from customer accounts.
SIPC protects customer assets when a SIPC-member brokerage firm fails financially.
Understand how SIPC protection works if you have multiple accounts.SIPC has recovered billions of dollars for investors. Our job is to recover missing cash or securities if your brokerage firm has gone out of business. SIPC does not protect digital asset securities that are investment contracts that are not registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, even if held by a SIPC member brokerage firm.
SIPC has issued Investor Bulletins explaining SIPC’s protection and claims process. Click here for Part I ("SIPC Basics"). Click here for Part II ("Filing a SIPC Claim").
WASHINGTON, D.C. - September 26, 2008 – The Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC), which maintains a special reserve fund authorized by Congress to help investors at failed brokerage firms, issued the following statement today from James W. Giddens, Lehman Brothers Inc. (LBI) SIPA Trustee:
“Through extraordinary, around the clock efforts of many participants including the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, the Trustee’s staff, former Lehman Brothers Inc. personnel, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and the Depository Trust Clearing Corporation, over 135,000 customer accounts are in the process of being transferred either to Neuberger Berman (through its clearing firm, Broadridge) or to Barclays Capital. This is a transfer of customer accounts in a liquidation proceeding of unprecedented size and speed and is a testament to the hard work and dedication of the professionals and regulators involved. The procedures being followed reflect the safeguards provided by the securities laws and the Securities Investor Protection Act in protecting customer assets.
To expedite transfer of accounts to other brokerage firms requested before the filing date of the SIPC liquidation, requests can be submitted to Barclays Capital Inc. beginning Monday, September 29, 2008 for prompt processing according to National Securities Clearing Corporation Notice 6714, dated September 25, 2008.
Counter-parties with securities and commodity transactions with Lehman Brothers Inc. may close them out and submit claims to the Trustee. The Trustee and SIPC have worked in cooperation with regulators to establish protocols wherever possible to facilitate efforts to close out transactions in an orderly and expedited fashion. Other procedures are being instituted for return of prime brokerage accounts of cash and fully paid securities held for their accounts according to a protocol to be posted on SIPC’s Web site (http://www.sipc.org) and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association’s (SIFMA) Web site (http://www.sifma.org).
Where applicable, procedures or protocols will be or have been the subject of further announcements by the Trustee, SIFMA and others. Claims arising from close outs can be submitted in accordance with the SIPC claims procedure in the Bankruptcy Court under a formal claims process. Claim forms will be distributed pursuant to court order and will be available at http://www.lehmantrustee.com. The Bankruptcy Court proceeding is being conducted under the auspices of United States Bankruptcy Judge James M. Peck.”