ARTWORK WHICH once adorned the walls of collapsed investment bank Lehman Brothers will go under the hammer next month in a £2 million (€2.4 million) sale, adminstrators of the business said yesterday.

PricewaterhouseCoopers will hold the auction at Christie’s in London on September 29th, days after the second anniversary of the bankruptcy. Works by artists including Lucien Freud and Gary Hume will all be up for sale. Another major work owned by the firm, photographer Andreas Gursky’s New York Mercantile Exchange (pictured above) will be auctioned separately in October and is hoped to fetch between $100,000 and $150,000.

The sale of the works will raise a minuscule sum compared with the $613 billion dollars in debts held by Lehman when it collapsed. Memorabilia will also be up for grabs including the commemorative plaque from the opening of the firm’s Canary Wharf office in 2004. This could fetch an estimated £1,500, while the sign for the office itself is hoped to land up to £3,000. –(PA)