Lehman investors demonstrate outside the Monetary Authority in Hong Kong on the one-year anniversary of the collapse of the Wall Street investment bank.

HONG KONG, CHINA (SEPTEMBER 15, 2009) REUTERS -- Braving storm warnings, a small group of Lehman Brothers investors gathered at Hong Kong's Monetary Authority on Tuesday (September 15) to commemorate the day the Wall Street giant went bust exactly a year ago.
About 37,000 investors who bought more than 2 billion U.S. dollars (USD) of Lehman-related financial products saw their investments disappear after the U.S. investment bank collapsed last September with 613 billion USD in liabilities.

Hong Kong regulators announced a settlement last month that requires the banks to return up to 70 percent of the principal to thousands of investors - but excluded "experienced" investors.

The Hong Kong government says that about a third of those eligible have taken up the offer.

Representing 2,200 Standard Chartered bank customers, Phillip Khan, who lost 90,000 USD, said the whole issue had taken a heavy toll on their lives.

"We feel so helpless and we have changed our lives almost during the whole year because we can't take care of our families, we spend more time on struggling with the banks, demonstrating, protesting every day, on a daily basis and we actually can't concentrate on our work," he told reporters at the protest.

Khan added that some Lehman victims have suffered psychological problems because of their ordeal.

Lan Yuk Ching, a single mother, said she had never heard of Lehman Brothers before she got a call last September from her banker.

Ching, originally from the Chinese mainland and speaks little Cantonese, said her bank suggested she put 75,000 USD she had borrowed from her mother to pay off her mortgage into an account that would give her more interest.

She said she thought she was putting it into a savings account. Six months later it was gone.

Ching, who says she works as a tour guide for Chinese tourists in Hong Kong, says the stress has brought her close to killing herself and her 11-year-old daughter.

In July she was admitted to a psychiatric ward for three weeks for severe depression.

"I don't know, I don't know how my daughter will face the future because I used to talk to her a lot but now it's different," she said, trying to hold back her tears.

"I don't want to talk to her, I don't want to take care of her. Although I try to be with her it's very different to before this. I don't know anything, I feel so lost, I'm scared, I'm really scared."

Eric King Fai Ma, a sixty-something retiree, returned to Hong Kong from the UK to look after his 90-year-old parents.

He claimed Standard Chartered misled him in investing in equity-backed notes.

Fai Ma also said he thought he was putting several thousand dollars of his pension into a savings account, as he said the interest was only marginally higher than his current account.

"No, no, I'm not a gambler. And at my age as well? I wanted to put my money in a safe place and keep it in a safe place as such and use it," he said.

Equity-linked notes combine attributes of both bonds and stock by investing part of the proceeds in share options and the remainder in fixed income.

Fai Ma and others have been protesting almost every day, demanding an inquiry and their money back.

"I thought that Hong Kong is ruled by the rule of law, by basic law, every law under the sun is you have it. Hong Kong is a guaranteed place, a financial institution, one of the financial centres of the world," he exclaimed.

"I don't expect banks to cough up a story to cheat the investors." He likened the banks to 'gangster-banks'.

Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, Joseph Yam, said a year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the consequences could still be felt around the world.

"Up to now, most of the financial systems in the financial market around the world are not yet functioning normally. They still need the support and lots of cash float from their governments," said Yam.

Asia became Lehman's highest growth region in 2007, taking in more than 3.1 billion USD in revenue, or 16 percent of the firm's business.