COMPANIES It had never happened before: the big white boards on which trades are logged in red marker pen at one of London’s leading interdealer brokers were completely blank. In the days after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, not one bank was prepared to lend. The money markets had broken down, overwhelmed by fear in the wake of the biggest bankruptcy on record.
Today confidence is gradually returning to the interbank lending markets, a key source of short-term funding for financial institutions, where the duration of the loans range from overnight to a year.
