• After frantic takeover talks with Bank of America and Barclays ended over the weekend—and after the U.S. government declined to provide a bailout—Lehman Brothers was forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this morning, marking an end to the 158-year-old firm. [Bloomberg, NYT, WSJ]

Go figure: There were two Lehman Brothers-related weddings announced in Sunday's Times. The "for poorer" section of the vows must have rung brutally even before the company officially headed for bankruptcy, since the company was clearly in trouble before the weddings took place Saturday.

158-year old investment bank Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy Sunday after banks Bank of America and Barclays refused to bail it out without government backing. But that doesn't mean anybody — including the IT guys — is getting the day off Monday. "We are counting on you to be at work on Monday and ready for business as usual," writes Lehman managing director Hari Gopalkrishan in an email obtained by Wall Street gossip blog Dealbreaker that we've copied below. In case your curious, popular lore has it that the last song Titanic's musicians played while the ship went down was "Nearer My God to Thee."

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal featured a story about Lehman Brothers wherein the paper sent a reporter out to eavesdrop around the bank's headquarters. "It's over, man...unless we get bought out in the next 24 hours, it's over," they quoted a "young man" as saying to someone on his cell phone. Then over by a "fast food cart" the reporter quoted one of three men wearing Lehman badges discussing the future of all capitalism in the event that the government decides to stop printing money to rescue banks whose stocks have been mercilessly pointlessly attacked by all those greedy/fearful predatory/lemminglike enemies of capitalism known as "capitalists," asking: "At some point, where does it stop?" Well here's where it stops, bro: your egg and cheese. They don't serve them with a "side of digital recorder" around here anymore.The food cart guy knows that whispers like the ones he hears outside are self-fulfilling prophecies in an irrational era like the modern ones, so he's shutting off the coffee spigot to reporters descending on the area to cover the Lehman crisis! You gotta wonder why he cares though. I mean, sure the impending layoffs at Lehman will have some "trickle-down" effect. But in lean times won't a larger percentage of bankers be eating from the food cart in lieu of whatever fancy hotels they've been patronizing on the company dime? Ha ha ha, or maybe that's just how I wish "lean times" worked at publicly traded companies. In any case I have another theory: the food cart guy is trying to buy Lehman Brothers. Sure 24,000 employees is a little ambitious, but Lehman stock is off 93% and at least you can read the food cart's balance sheet. Or maybe the food cart guy is just a decent guy. Photo Of The Day [Portfolio] Credit Crisis Strains Government's Options [WSJ]

If you're JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon or Bank of America chief Ken Lewis and you're conferring with your lawyers today about making a bid for Lehman Brothers, allow us to show you one other asset that will (presumably) come with the purchase: the Lehman jet. Sure, you guys already have a few planes at your disposal (see here for Dimon's ride), but the Bombardier BD-700 Global Express is super-sweet ride. And it's the same exact model that Oprah has. Click here for a larger picture of the plane.

Sorry! If you were looking to pick up bofalehman.com, barclayslehman.com or hsbclehman.com, they've all been taken. [Dealbook, Dealbreaker]

Sharp-eyed readers of this morning's Wall Street Journal may notice that editor and Briton Robert Thomson has imported to the financial paper not just the starchy crispness of his old Financial Times but a dash of London's Fleet Street, as well. Read to the end of the front-pager on Lehman Brothers shopping itself and you'll find, as Daily Intelligencer did, that the Journal has truly redefined what it means by "Heard On The Street." In addition to being the title of the paper's bread-and-butter finance column, the phrase now literally describes how Journal reporters collect information. From the article:

On a day like today, you might expect the assistant to Lehman Brothers CEO Dick Fuld to be particularly stressed out as her boss frantically tries to find someone—anyone—to acquire the faltering investment bank. She sounds pretty upbeat and energetic to us, but we'll let you be the judge.

Other parties (in addition to Bank of America) rumored to be looking into buying Lehman Brothers today: the Chinese sovereign wealth fund China Investment Co., and J. Christopher Flowers' JC Flowers. [FT via Dealbreaker]

• Will today be Lehman's last day as an independent firm? Last-minute discussions continue with several possible rescuers, including Bank of America and possibly Barclays, and the Fed has said it has no plans to bail out the nation's fourth-largest investment bank. [WSJ, NYT, Bloomberg]
  

Financial giant Lehman Brothers is in trouble thanks to large holdings in the market for subprime mortgage securities. The company's stock is dropping like a rock, and the company is looking at a total of $4 billion in writedowns on bad debt. Meanwhile, edits to the Wikipedia page have shown a volatile but largely inverse relationship with the share price. And before a Reuters report announcing that the firm is up for sale, an editor on Wikipedia briefly included the following factoid — from the future:

Goldman Sachs is not buying Lehman Brothers, contrary to reports earlier today, "reflecting concerns that integrating two investment banks would be too disruptive." With Lehman's stock now down another 40% today (and more than 70% on the week thus far), all credible offers will be taken into consideration. Interested? Please call 212-526-7000 and ask to speak to Dick. [Reuters]

• Lehman CEO Dick Fuld's announcement yesterday about the firm's new strategic direction hasn't changed much, say analysts, and questions about Lehman's ability to weather the storm continue to loom. [NYT, WSJ, FT, NYP]

Lehman Brothers CEO Dick Fuld will walk away with an exit package worth $214 million if, as some analysts suggest, he steps down voluntarily and retires to a life of golf alongside Chuck Prince and Stan O'Neal. [The Deal via Dealbreaker]

• A battered Lehman Brothers plans to spin off the majority of its real estate investments into a new company and sell more than half its interest in its investment management division. The bank also predicted a third-quarter loss of $3.9 billion. [WSJ, Dealbook]

Shares in Lehman Brothers plummeted by 40 percent today after it was reported that talks to sell a stake in the fourth-largest investment bank to Korea's KDP had ended. If you work there and you've yet to dust off your resume, tonight would be a good time to do so. [Reuters, Dealbreaker]

• Investors generally reacted positively yesterday to the news of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailout. [WSJ]

• The seizure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by the federal government over the weekend has sent global stocks up sharply this morning. [Bloomberg]
  

• Altria, the maker of Marlboro cigarettes, is in talks to buy UST for more than $10 billion. [NYT]

• Steve Feinberg's investments in Chrysler and GMAC haven't gone as expected and now his Cerberus Capital is on the defensive. [NYT]