Lehman Investment Op

A type of zero-coupon Treasury bond issued by the U.S. government through Lehman Brothers. Lehman Investment Opportunity Notes (LIONs), were created as a new breed of security that separated principal and interest and were issued at a discount. LIONs made no regular interest payments to bondholders; the return on investment came from realizing the difference between the discounted issue price and the par value received at maturity.



|||LIONs are one of three types of "feline" securities (along with TIGRs and CATS) issued between 1982 and 1986. The U.S. government introduced its own direct version of this bond in 1986 with zero-coupon STRIPS. This effectively rendered the previous private issues obsolete, although they still trade on the secondary market.