Was Lehman Brothers a BB?

Yes. Lehman was about the same size as Morgan Stanley, and it was arguably one of the biggest and best in Fixed Income trading and credit origination.

Ten years ago, the term BB totally existed, and Lehman was considered one, but the industry was a bit different. Yes, investment banking has always been big, but trading made up a bigger portion of a bank's business back then. Banks were allowed to take risk and have their their own proprietary positions, sometimes in groups under S&T but separated from their broker/dealer business. Some even had their own hedge funds and private equity arms. On relative basis, Lehman derived a lot of strength from fixed income trading relative to other banks. If you wanted to get some financing by securitizing a bunch of receivables; if you wanted to issue a bond with an interesting structure; if you wanted to buy or sell that stuff on the secondary market; you came to Lehman.

Lehman would compete with GS, Morgan Stanley, Citi, etc for investment banking clients. And when they wanted to issue a bond, or issue a complicated fixed income security, they more often than not came to us. Because that was Lehman's strength. Citi and JP Morgan had a balance sheet that we didn't have-- if you wanted to do a huge LBO they had a comparative advantage for financing, but everyone came to us for the complicated fixed income issuances.

So Lehman was not a commercial bank like Citi or JPM, or what GS is trying to turn itself into. But it was a bulge bracket.

I worked in Corporate Bond Analytics (IE risk and pricing numbers for traders; the Lehman Index) for my internship and first full-time year, so there are probably people out there who know more than me. But it was a very big and very proud firm.