Sunday marks the five year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, which is widely seen as the spark that set off the global financial meltdown.

Proposed and forthcoming EU regulations--from the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive to the financial transactions tax and the bonus cap on bankers and fund managers--have, in large part, their genesis in the Lehman failure.

On September 15, 2008, what was once America’s fourth largest investment bank filed for bankruptcy. It was the world’s largest corporate failure, with Lehman claiming debts of more than $700 billion, including several dozen billion euros worth at its Luxembourg subsidiaries.

The company’s receivers are still paying back creditors and winding down operations.

The fifth anniversary has not gone unnoticed by the world’s media. Among the best retrospectives, reporting and analysis this week:

Best overviews

The Economist provided the most authoritative primer on the causes of the crisis.

BBC News produced a relatively jargon-free overview of the financial “heart attack” and the reforms that have followed, as well as a “crisis jargon buster”.

NPR, America’s public radio broadcaster, also tackled the topics of “too big to fail”, the “missed opportunity” of bank reform, how the Lehman collapse “still stings”, and an interview with Henry Paulson, US treasury secretary at the time.

What happened

The Telegraph presented a digital “timeline of the final days of the Lehman Brothers bank” and the immediate aftermath in global financial markets.

The Guardian has packaged the best of its reporting on Lehman and the crisis, including “28 days that shook the world” which was prepared to mark the first year anniversary but still serves as a worthwhile read.

Fall-out

The New York Times examined how it is that, with the statute of limitations fast approaching, US authorities have failed to prosecute any Lehman executives.

The Center for Public Integrity, a Washington-based non-profit investigative news organisation, published “After the Meltdown”, a three part series that looks at where Wall Street bankers at the centre of the storm are today.

Where we are today

Funds Europe takes a brief look at “Global markets 5 years after Lehman collapse”.

Institutional Investor’s “Legacy of Lehman” special report argued that five years on, “Europe’s banks, slow to restructure, pose a systemic risk today”.

Lessons learned

In “Lehman’s Legacy”, the Financial Times asked if “post-crisis regulation has reduced the risks of a repeat”.

News agency Bloomberg spoke with 50 bankers to see if US financial institutions are still “too big to fail” and too “opaque and interconnected”.

USA Today concluded that “few lessons” had been learned from the type of financial engineering that led to the downfall of Lehman Brothers.

The Wall Street Journal posited that “it could have been worse. But could it have been better?”

Insider accounts

eFinancialNews spoke with “some of the biggest names in financial services questions about their memories of September 15, 2008 and the lessons learned from the bank’s fall”.

On Monday, Bloomberg Businessweek Films releases “Hank: Five Years from the Brink”, a documentary by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Joe Berlinger that profiles Paulson and his attempts to manage the unfolding crisis.