$330 Million for Lehman's Two NJ Data Centers

Barclays will pay $330 million for two Lehman Brothers data centers it is acquiring as part of a larger deal to purchase assets of the bankrupt investment bank. The two data centers are both located in New Jersey, in Piscataway and Cranford.  

The valuation emerged from a bankruptcy court hearing in which the purchase price for the real estate components of the deal were adjusted to $1.29 billion, including $960 million for Lehman's New York headquarters and $330 million for the data centers. Lehman's original estimate valued its headquarters at $1.02 billion but an appraisal this week valued it at $900 million.

Last week we noted the critical role of real estate , which represented the majority of the value in Barclays bid for the Lehman assets, which originally bore a price tage of $1.75 million but was adjusted by the bankruptcy court. While the Lehman headquarters is the big-ticket asset in the deal, the $330 million valuation for the two data centers is also higher than the $250 million valuation of Lehman's North American investment banking and trading unit.

With more than $600 billion in pre-petition assets, the Lehman case dwarfs the second-largest U.S. bankruptcy, WorldCom, whose 2002 bankruptcy had assets over $100 billion.