Excel error leaves Barclays with more Lehman assets than it bargained for

A reformatting error in an Excel spreadsheet has cropped up in the largest bankruptcy case in U.S. history, prompting a legal motion by Barclays Capital Inc. to amend its deal to buy some of the assets of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

The law firm representing Barclays filed the motion on Friday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, seeking to exclude 179 Lehman contracts that it said were mistakenly included in the asset purchase agreement. The firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP said in the motion that one of its first-year law associates had unknowingly added the contracts when reformatting a spreadsheet in Excel.

At the time when the error occurred, Cleary Gottlieb was working under a tight deadline put in place by the bankruptcy court to submit the purchase offer from Barclays, according to the motion. The mistake was discovered Oct. 1 and was first reported by Above the Law, a legal news Web site.