One Advanced Trading reader, a buy-side trader, sent me an email sharing his thoughts on how his firms is handling the events of the past few days. He said I could share them with our readers, under the condition of anonymity. Here is what he had to say:

"Things have not been easy - as you would expect. Lehman was one of our prime brokers. We only used them for some small balances nevertheless there was some work involved in getting our assets transferred. I don't use the term 'work' to imply that we were left in the dark or that communication wasn't fluid - in fact their people were fantastic, true professionals actually - it just created some added responsibilities for our CFO and his team. We were not active users of either Merrill or Lehman algos; most of the biz we conducted at both firms was at the high-touch level on the derivatives and equity side (we were considered a top customer of each).

In terms of what consequences to expect as a result of the consolidation of Merrill and the 'name' change of Lehman to Barclays; only time will tell. I suspect in certain situations liquidity might suffer but there are enough firms to eventually make up for it. The real loss will be at the relationship level; there are certain people and firms that know exactly how to service our account - this will undoubtedly change following the expected mgmt re-shuffle. We pay the Street for resources - which can be made up of many different things - will either of these new firms, in their new form be able to continue to provide them? From our standpoint it's a wait and see process. Our hope is obviously that things remain consistent—my gut tells me that is probably wishful thinking. Mergers and takeovers like this have proven difficult in the past, why should this time be any different?"