SINGAPORE: Hundreds of distraught investors flooded a park yesterday to express their anguish at losses from structured notes issued by Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc that they say were sold to them by banks as safe investments.

Among the crowd that gathered were retired middle-class and working-class investors. During the past few years as their other fixed-income instruments matured, local bank officials pushed a 5- to 7-year bond that would yield about five per cent, higher than the 0.5 per cent interest rate banks pay on checking or savings account deposits.

"This wasn't some pyramid scheme, or so we were led to believe," said Lawrence Chin, a 62-year-old retired salesman who invested S$50,000 (RM118,000) in the bonds in 2006.

Small investors such as Chin are bearing part of the destruction wrought by a credit crisis that began last year with US subprime mortgages and has since engulfed markets around the world. Investment bank giant Lehman declared bankruptcy last month.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore said about 8,000 people bought S$508 million of Lehman-linked structured notes from nine banks and brokerages.

The bank said on Friday that the bonds' trustee, HSBC, "has not received firm proposals from potential new swap counter parties" and the notes' underlying securities would not be sold for at least two weeks.