Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000

I had a sense that the situation had gone beyond our ability to handle it on our own. I told Ben and Tim and the others on the call that the time had probably come to go to Congress for fiscal authorities to deal with the unfolding crisis. We had all wanted this for some time. After the Fed call, I heard the only good news of the weekend: Bank of America was going to buy Merrill Lynch for $50 billion. Thain had managed to arrange a sale at $29 per share, a 70 percent premium over MerrillБЂ™s market price. I was relieved: without this, I knew, Merrill would not have lasted the week. We had planned to announce LehmanБЂ™s bankruptcy at 4:00 p.m., four hours before JapanБЂ™s markets opened, to allow as much time as possible for market participants to prepare themselves. The SEC was supposed to take the lead on this, but all afternoon I got reports from the Fed that the commission was moving slowly. Chris Cox had been in his office for hours working on a press release to assure LehmanБЂ™s broker-dealer customers that they would be protected under SEC regulations ...»