Some of Lehman Brothers’ top executives stand to make millions of pounds for three months’ work helping the failed bank’s liquidator to unwind its trades.

The Times has learnt that the bill for the work will be covered by Nomura, the Japanese bank that is buying large chunks of Lehman, in a deal hammered out by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Lehman’s administrator.

Nomura said yesterday that it would hire more than 150 of Lehman’s fixed-income staff. Nomura had already agreed to buy Lehman’s European and Middle Eastern investment banking and equities businesses and its Asian operations. About 2,500 Lehman employees, including the 150-plus in fixed income, will transfer to Nomura. The bank declined to comment on compensation.

As part of the sale brokered by PwC in the weeks after the American bank collapsed, Nomura is expected to match the generous compensation packages offered by PwC to senior Lehman fixed-income staff.

PwC was desperate to keep key staff at the defunct bank long enough to unwind trades worth billions of pounds. As part of the agreement with Nomura, the bankers are expected to work until the end of the year before moving to Nomura.

The administrator is thought to have offered some bankers a minimum of 50 per cent of their total 2007 compensation and up to 100 per cent if they managed to unwind the trades in a timely and profitable manner.

Some of the employees involved each made up to $7 million in total compensation last year, about 50 per cent of which would have been paid in Lehman equity. The deals agreed by PwC were to be paid in cash for only three months’ work.

Some employees were promised a percentage of the value of the trades that they were able to unwind. PwC is thought to have identified a handful of trades of particularly high value to Lehman, including derivative deals worth as much as €2 billion to the bank. That would make even a tiny percentage payment hugely profitable.

Sources at Lehman described the compensation packages as “extraordinarily large” and criticised some senior employees in fixed income for accepting roles in the unwind ahead of staff who worked on the day-to-day operations of the division. “They jumped in the lifeboat before the women and children,” one source said. “People have turned down jobs at other banks to stay and get rich.”

Tony Lomas, the lead PwC administrator working on Lehman, declined to comment on individual compensation packages. He said that by ensuring that such a large number of staff transferred to the Japanese bank, PwC “avoided a big redundancy and notice claim crystalising against Lehman”. If staff had been made redundant instead of moving to Nomura, they would have joined Lehman’s creditors in demanding a payment from the bank.

Nomura said yesterday that the vast majority of the top bankers in Lehman’s European and Middle Eastern investment banking and equities businesses had accepted positions at the bank. It described the acquisition, which does not include any Lehman’s assets, as “transformational”.

The 150 workers from Lehman’s fixed-income business will be added to Nomura’s credit, interest rate and foreign exchange businesses, reporting to Zenji Nakamura, the bank’s global head of fixed income. Akira Maruyama, chief executive of global markets at Nomura, said: “We’ve attracted people in businesses who will provide synergies of scale and scope.”

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