Lehman Brothers Seeks to Raise $5 Billion, Move Up Earnings Report Date

A Bloomberg report this morning claims that a "person" insists Lehman is now upping the amount of capital it intends to raise to $5 billion from the previously reported $3-$4 billion.  Who is this person?  It could be my cat, given how much speculation has occurred around Lehman's financial situation.  Furthermore, the same or another "person familiar with the matter" has informed Reuters that Lehman may release its second quarter results earlier than originally planned.  Apparently, Lehman is sick and tired of all the speculation about its financial condition and believes that releasing its earnings report early will quell investor unease.  Alternatively, Lehman may actually be having problems with counterparties not wanting to trade with it and believes that once the company comes clean and trading partners see that the situation is not as bad as the rumors, confidence will return.  That strategy did not work for Bear Stearns, who moved up its earnings report for the same reason but never made it to the date to report its "profits".  Those "profits" were based on a belief announced by the CEO right before Bear failed, that book value of the company was still roughly $80 a share.  Now that the Fed synthetically owns $29 billion in securities that no dealer on Wall Street would touch with a 10-foot pole, and JP Morgan has taken a $9 billion after-tax charge to account for the acquisition, one must question Bear's pricing of its portfolio.  How close to reality were those prices anyway if nobody wanted to buy securities that equaled nearly all of Bear's supposed "book" value?  Similar doubts currently swirl around Lehman.  They may or may not be cleared up at the earnings conference call, says a person only slightly familiar with the matter.