KKR LOOKING TO BUY NEUBERGER

KKR Indicates "High" Interest in NB.

Last week sources close to Lehman said that the asking price for Neuberger would somewhere in the $10 billion range.

A quick look at LEH as it trades today and it shows a market cap of approx $9.6 billion. Heck, the stock is pricing the investment bank plus NB even a tad bit cheaper than the asking price LEH has tagged on NB. A takeover of the entire firm could be a 2-for-1 deal: buy Lehman and we throw in a money manager for free.

Ah not so easy. If it were then it would have happened by now. The problem: if you buy the firm then you assume the downside of the toxic debt....and how do you value that? And maybe the "smart money" suspects that more bad news is still to come.

I for one will be very interested to see where LEH trades if a deal does materialize for NB.

Stay tuned, this will be interesting.