Every real estate bankruptcy has a ripple effect on vendors who don’t get paid because the property owner withheld payments prior to the filing and/or the bill wasn’t paid as a consequence of the normal billing/payment cycle. From the Wall Street Journal:
A Lehman-financed venture owes a company called Goats R Us about $53,000. The goats performed fire-prevention by munching shrubs and grass on a property the venture owns in Oakland, California…
About $43 billion of Lehman's $639 billion in assets was from the firm's far-flung real-estate operations, which included housing projects, resorts, office buildings and other properties all over the world. Those hurt include hydrologists near San Francisco and chambermaids in Palm Springs. Also left in the lurch were Chinese laborers who were flown into the Turks and Caicos Islands in the West Indies to help build a Ritz-Carlton resort.
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