treasury paying them back for their gain on freddie and fannie Sept. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Pimco Advisors LP, Vanguard Group Inc. and Franklin Advisers Inc. are among investment companies that may face losses of at least $86 billion stemming from the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., the biggest bankruptcy in history. Mutual fund companies' filings show they hold more than $143 billion of bonds, led by Newport Beach, California-based Pacific Investment Management Co., manager of the world's biggest bond fund, and Valley Forge, Pennsylvania-based Vanguard, according to data compiled by Bloomberg as of June 30. ``The losses look set to be widespread, hurting the public through their mutual and pension funds,'' said Ciaran O'Hagan, a credit strategist at Societe Generale SA in Paris. ``It's clearly a disaster for public confidence.'' While bond investors will recover different amounts based on their ranking in Lehman's capital structure, models of credit-default swaps assume lenders will recoup 40 percent of their loans overall in a bankruptcy. Investors may receive less than that, based on prices for Lehman's senior bonds of as little as 35 cents on the dollar from price provider Trace. Pimco holds Lehman bonds in at least 12 of its funds, including the $134 billion Total Return Fund. Bill Gross, manager of the fund and co-chief investment officer of Pimco, was buying Lehman bonds as recently as June, Bloomberg data show. Fannie, Freddie While Gross may have lost on Lehman investments, he gained from those in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. His Total Return Fund made a $1.7 billion gain after the U.S. government seized control of the two mortgage-finance companies, Bloomberg data show. The fund's assets rose 1.3 percent to more than $134 billion on Sept. 8, according to Bloomberg. It has returned 4.19 percent this year, beating 98 percent of similar funds, Bloomberg data show. Vanguard holds Lehman bonds among the $450 billion of fixed income it manages, spokesman John Woerth said. An outside spokeswoman for Pimco in London, who asked not to be named, said the company had no immediate comment, Lisa Gallegos, a spokeswoman for Franklin in San Mateo, California, wasn't immediately available. New York-based Lehman, which filed for protection from creditors today, owes its 10 largest unsecured creditors more than $157 billion, according to the Chapter 11 filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York. The largest single creditor is Aozora Bank Ltd. in Tokyo, with $463 million in a bank loan. Other top creditors include Mizuho Corporate Bank Ltd., owed $382 million, and a Citigroup Inc. unit based in Hong Kong, owed an estimated $275 million, according to the filing. Total Debt Lehman listed total debts of $613 billion and $639 billion of assets in the filing. Credit-default swaps, contracts conceived to protect bondholders against default, pay the buyer face value in exchange for specific underlying securities should a company fail to adhere to its debt agreements. Axa SA, Europe's second-biggest insurer, and unnamed affiliates, own 7.25 percent of Lehman's equity, according to the filing. Clearbridge Advisers LLC, the asset manager that Baltimore-based Legg Mason Inc. acquired from Citigroup Inc. in 2005, held 6.33 percent, according to the filing. Boston-based FMR LLC, the parent of Fidelity, the world's largest mutual fund company, held 5.9 percent, the filing said.
These bond traders need to face up to loses. They are the root of all of these problems, yet equity is the one crushed.