We thought this might have been a Photoshop prank when we first saw it, but the Post now confirms it: Barclays, the British bank that announced it was purchasing a bankrupt Lehman Brothers last week, changed the neon sign outside Lehman's headquarters at 745 Seventh Avenue this morning. Like you wouldn't do the same thing if a $1.5 billion office building landed in your lap for pennies on the dollar! [NYP]
♦ Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have won approval to become bank holding companies, which will give them greater access to federal funds and also put them under tighter oversight and regulation. [WSJ, NYP]
♦ After suspending talks with Wachovia over the weekend, Morgan Stanley announced this morning that it is selling a 10-20 percent stake to Japan's largest bank, Mitsubishi UFJ. [WSJ, Bloomberg]
♦ The proposed $700 billion bailout package turned into a political football this weekend. [WSJ, NYT]
♦ Nomura will pay $225 million for Lehman's Asian operations. [WSJ]
♦ After last week's wild ride, everyone is bracing for another eventful week on Wall Street. [NYT]
♦ The world's major central banks teamed together to flood the markets with dollars as part of an effort to contain the unfolding financial crisis. [WSJ, NYT]
♦ Morgan Stanley has been in talks with Wachovia, Wells Fargo and the Chinese bank Citic; Morgan's CEO, John Mack, blames short sellers and rumors for yesterday's big drop. [NYP, CNBC, Dealbook, WSJ]
♦ Washington Mutual's bankers at Goldman Sachs are "frantically looking for a buyer or a capital infusion in the next several days." [NYP]
♦ Rules introduced by the SEC today will make it harder for traders to drive down prices and will require them to share more info about their trades. [WSJ]
♦ Fearing another massive corporate bankruptcy, the Federal Reserve agreed to an $85 billion bailout of the troubled insurance giant AIG. [NYT, WSJ, Fortune, NYP]
♦ AIG's CEO, Robert Willumstad, will be replaced by Edward Liddy, the former CEO of Allstate. [Marketwatch]
♦ AIG's ex-CEO Hank Greenberg is dismayed he wasn't involved in the bailout effort. Considering he's tangled up in about half a dozen lawsuits with his former company, that wasn't so surprising. [WSJ]
♦ Concern now seems to be focused on Washington Mutual: Federal officials have contacted Wells Fargo, JPMorgan, and HSBC to gauge their interest in a possible acquisition of WaMu. [NYP]
♦ John Thain and two of his deputies stand to make $200 million for the year they've spent at Merrill. [Bloomberg]
Roughly a third of Lehman's employees will get to hold on to their jobs: "Barclays PLC has reached an agreement to buy the U.S. investment bank and capital-markets businesses of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and as many as 9,000 Lehman employees will find jobs with the U.K. bank, according to people familiar with the situation." The deal will go before a New York bankruptcy court judge at 5 p.m. today; an official announcement won't be made until tomorrow morning. [WSJ]
