German KfW lending bank trasferred $426 million to Lehman Brothers, just after the investment bank collapsed.

What a shocking and embarrassing mistake occurred this past Monday in the banking world. Here are some headlines from German Papers:

The business daily Handelsblatt writes:

“There are certain mistakes that just can’t be allowed to happen at a bank. Transferring ~300 million euros ($426 million) to Lehman Brothers — an institution that had already shown itself to be a candidate for bankruptcy the night before — is one of those mistakes.”

The leftist daily Die Tageszeitung writes:

“Anyone who watched TV, listened to the radio or read the newspaper over the weekend saw or heard images showing Lehman Brothers employees rushing to clean out their offices. But the two KfW employees must have slept through all that on their well-earned weekend. Now they’ll likely lose their jobs.”

KfW draws consequences from Lehman:

The Supervisory Board has intensively analysed the Lehman incident and decided at the proposal of KfW Managing Board Chairman Dr. Ulrich Schröder to suspend the two responsible Managing Board members Dr. Peter Fleischer and Detlef Leinberger from their functions with immediate effect pending final clarification of the incident.

The Managing Board also suspended the Senior Vice President in charge of the Risk Controlling Department with immediate effect until the incident has been clarified. The Supervisory Board has acknowledged that Managing Board Chairman Dr. Ulrich Schröder has hired a law firm to examine whether the events that have been identified call for appropriate consequences.