Lehman Brothers will pay out an additional $17.9B to creditors.

This is its fifth distribution since a judge approved the failed investment bank's liquidation plan in December 2011, and bringing the total doled out so far to more than $80B - $15B higher than its initial estimate of how much would be paid to creditors. While much of this most recent distribution involves money Lehman entities owe to one another, the outlook for creditors keeps improving. Those holding bonds issued by the Lehman parent company are now expected to get 26.9 cents on the dollar vs. an earlier estimate of 21.1 cents. For hedge funds who have spent years buying Lehman debt at big discounts, an increase of just a few cents means millions in profits.