Lessons for market participants: Diversify your investments & hire a good risk manager
'The markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent,' goes a quote attributed to John Maynard Keynes. But the market is the final arbiter of value. Lehman Brothers had $600 billion in assets when it filed for bankruptcy in 2008. But a lot of those assets had no liquid market. Lehman valued them based on esoteric models that were too optimistic in their assumptions, and they didn't hold up when the markets turned.
Source: indiatimes.com