Court Orders Lehman, Banks to Talk it Out on Archstone

CHICAGO-A US Bankruptcy Court judge in Manhattan Wednesday told Lehman Bros. to sit down and try to work out a dispute with Bank of America and Barclays Bank over the banks’ sale of 26.5% of interest in Archstone, a large apartment firm, to locally based Equity Residential, reports say.

Lehman, which owns 47% of Denver-based Archstone, has filed a right-of-first-refusal offer of $1.3 billion for the banks’ interest, in order to block the sale to Equity. The company also sued the banks in its bankruptcy court to push back the contractual first refusal deadline for the sale. The banks and Lehman were supposed to meet again late Wednesday, after the deadline for this story.