Lehman Brothers was the U.S. investment bank whose September 2008 failure intensified the global stock-market crash.
Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy on September 15, 2008, after suffering enormous losses tied largely to mortgage-related assets. Its collapse was the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history at the time and became a central symbol of the global financial crisis.
The failure froze confidence in financial institutions because banks and investors could not easily determine who was exposed to troubled securities. Credit markets seized up, stock prices fell sharply, and governments and central banks introduced emergency measures. The crisis had already been developing through falling U.S. house prices and rising mortgage defaults.
Bear Stearns had been rescued earlier in 2008, while Merrill Lynch was acquired by Bank of America. These events are often grouped together, but Lehman Brothers was the institution that actually entered bankruptcy in September.