It's a happy outcome for employees of the Lehman Brothers investment management business, as well as for its clients: Lehman Brothers Holdings has agreed to sell Neuberger Berman to its managers. The deal beats out a bid from private equity firms Bain Capital and Hellman & Friedman, which many considered to be too low.

A group of managers and senior employees of Lehman Brothers‘ Neuberger Berman unit was selected as the winning bidder for the money management business after an auction in Federal Bankruptcy Court on Wednesday.

The auction’s outcome, which was formally announced Wednesday evening, was first reported by DealBook earlier in the afternoon.

The bid by the Neuberger Berman team trumped a previous bid by two private equity firms, Bain Capital and Hellman & Friedman, because it offered greater value and certainty of closing, said Jim Fogarty, a managing director with the corporate turnaround firm Alvarez & Marsal and chief operating officer of Lehman Brothers Holdings.

A third bidder had emerged, but only for certain Neuberger assets.

Under terms of the winning bid, a stand-alone company, Neuberger Investment Management, will be spun off from Lehman, with the management group owning 51 percent. The Lehman estate would retain a 49 percent stake.

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