Is Lehman the next Bear Stearns?

The Globe & Mail is reporting that Lehman Brothers might have to go back to the capital raising trough again in order to shore up a leveraged and risky balance sheet. In the face of yesterday’s credit downgrade by S&P, this sounds like a wise idea.

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. may raise billions of dollars of fresh capital, suggesting the investment bank will post its first quarterly loss since going public, the Wall Street Journal said on Tuesday, citing sources familiar with the matter.

Analysts and Wall Street executives estimate it might total $3-billion to $4-billion(U.S.) , the newspaper said.
–The Globe & Mail, 3 June 2008

The bleeding continues.

Update: MarketWatch and a host of other news outlets are making the Bear Stearns analogy. See the MarketWatch story below:
Living without the Bear buffer, MarketWatch, 3 June 2008

See also: Credit Crisis Timeline for a full list of writedowns and capital raising by institution and a timeline of the credit crunch.