LTCM

Goldman Sachs, AIG and Berkshire Hathaway offered then to buy out the fund's partners for $250 million, to inject $4 billion and to operate LTCM within Goldman Sachs's own trading. The offer was rejected and the same day the Federal Reserve Bank of New York organized a bail out of $3.625 billion by the major creditors to avoid a wider collapse in the financial markets. The contributions from the various institutions were as follows: [2] [3]
$300 million: Bankers Trust, Barclays, Chase, Credit Suisse First Boston, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, J.P.Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Salomon Smith Barney, UBS
$125 million: Société Générale
$100 million: Lehman Brothers, Paribas
Bear Stearns declined to participate.
In return, the participating banks got a 90% share in the fund and a promise that a supervisory board would be established.
The fear was that there would be a chain reaction as the company liquidated its securities to cover its debt, leading to a drop in prices, which would force other companies to liquidate their own debt creating a vicious cycle.
The total losses were found to be $4.6 billion. The losses in the major investment categories were (ordered by magnitude):
$1.6 bn in swaps
$1.3 bn in equity volatility
$430 mn in Russian and other emerging markets
$371 mn in directional trades in developed countries
$215 mn in yield curve arbitrage
$203 mn in S&P 500 stocks
$100 mn in junk bond arbitrage
no substantial losses in merger arbitrage
See also: East Asian financial crisis
Long Term Capital was audited by Price Waterhouse LLP.
Ironically, after the bail-out by the other investors, the panic abated, and the positions formerly held by LTCM were eventually liquidated at a small profit to the bailers.
Some industry officials said that Federal Reserve Bank of New York involvement in the rescue, however benign, would encourage large financial institutions to assume more risk, in the belief that the Federal Reserve would intervene on their behalf in the event of trouble. Federal Reserve Bank of New York actions raised concerns among some market observers that it could create moral hazard. [4]

[edit] A deeper understanding of the risks taken by LTCM