Brokerage to pay Lehman investors

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A Hong Kong brokerage is to buy back 85m Hong Kong dollars ($11m; £8m) worth of Lehman Brothers-backed investments that it sold to clients.

It means an estimated 310 investors will get back the money they invested with Sun Hung Kai Investment Services.

Hong Kong's regulator, the Securities and Futures Commission, has reprimanded it for its training of sales staff and research into Lehman products.

The brokerage denies any wrongdoing or liability for the products.

'High risk'

Some Hong Kong investors have called for the government to intervene after they lost money on structured investment products linked to Lehman Brothers when the investment bank collapsed in September.

They accused local banks of not doing enough to warn them of the risks the products carried.

A Sun Hung Kai advertisement described the Lehman-backed mini-bonds as a product "letting you invest with peace of mind", although the small print mentioned that there was "a high degree of risk".

Sun Hung Kai is one of Hong Kong's largest non-bank financial institutions.