The phone hasn’t stopped ringing for Lehman Brothers’ top brass in India and the calls are not from sympathisers — headhunters and rival companies are chasing the top management of the bankrupt investment banking firm with job offers.

Those being chased include top executives such as I-banking head Surojit Shome, equities head Pankaj Vaish, private equity head Naresh Naik, real estate PE head Sundaram Rajagopal, FID real estate head Sumit Anand and global finance head Prashant Purker. Headhunters are reportedly moving around with the CVs of top-rung executives at Lehman Brothers in India.

“We’re talking to them. This is a high-quality talent pool and several large and mid-sized players are looking at poaching them. However, the top guys are not willing to commit just as yet,” said a headhunter. Sources in the headhunting fraternity admitted that discussions with the executives were in progress. There is a race to place these men as their average salaries ranging from $2-3 million spell big commissions for the headhunters, whose fees are linked to the pay packets of the candidates concerned.

Before joining Lehman, Mr Shome was the managing director and corporate banking head for India and the sub-continent and Mr Vaish managed the proprietary trading of global equity markets at Citigroup. Mr Purker worked at ICICI Bank, where he was responsible for the bank’s Indian proprietary trading business and the investment and trading activities of its overseas branches. Interestingly, all three had joined Lehman last year.

The country head of a leading executive search firm, who was involved in placing some of the top guns at Lehman, said: “These people won’t have to search for jobs. Besides I-banks, some of them would land up at private equity firms sooner rather than later.”

According to an executive of a Mumbai-based search firm, the top five financial services companies — HDFC, Reliance Capital, ICICI, Axis Bank and Kotak — are likely to approach Lehman’s top guns.

The investment banking firm has long been a poaching ground. Last month, Samita Shah, the MD and co-head of Lehman’s Asia Special Situations team in India, moved to Credit Suisse to head its I-banking department. The mortgage capital senior VP Sameer Chadha had earlier quit to head Barclays’ upcoming back-office operations in India. While the top guys at Lehman Brothers are inundated with lucrative job offers, things may not be so good for the entry-level and middle management employees. The banking firm has over 2,300 employees in the country, including those working in its BPO and KPO operations.