German Bank offered to compensate customers

BURNED BY LEHMAN SECURITIES

German Bank Admits Giving Wrong Advice to Investors

Tens of thousands of German investors who had bought Lehman Brothers certificates lost their savings when the bank went under. Now one savings bank has admitted giving its customers the wrong advice and is offering compensation.

When the US bank Lehman Brothers went bust last September, tens of thousands of private German investors who had bought supposedly safe Lehman securities got burned. Since then, they have held protests and demanded compensation from their banks, claiming they were not warned of the risks.

DPA

"My bank is broke -- I am too": German investors protest outside a Citibank branch in Hamburg.

Now a German bank has admitted that it gave customers the wrong advice relating to the purchase of Lehman Brothers certificates. According to a report on the German public television station ARD, the savings bank Frankfurter Sparkasse (Fraspa) said it had discovered that "in a very small number of cases the advice did not meet our quality standards."

In a statement confirming the television report later on Monday, the bank also said it had offered to compensate customers as a gesture of goodwill "in a small number of cases of financial hardship." (more)