Barclays scored a major legal victory in New York yesterday after a judge ruled that its purchase of much of the US operations of Lehman Brothers was fair… The ruling by US bankruptcy judge James Peck also shot down the claim by trustees for Lehman that Barclays should pay back an $11bn windfall it allegedly received because of the hurried nature of the sale in the autumn of 2008. The lawsuit, which was filed by Lehman in November 2009, had alleged that Barclays had pocketed a “secret profit” of $5bn from various securities it acquired as part of the purchase. Bob Diamond, now the chief executive of Barclays, led the purchase of Lehman’s operations in his then capacity as head of Barclays Capital. The deal came days after Lehman’s bankruptcy filing pushed a weakened financial system to the brink of collapse.