Lehman anniversary: What could Gordon Brown learn from Dick Fuld?

Fuld: a Shakespearean anti-hero for today

How to mark an anniversary? Whether a happy or sad occasion it’s always a tricky business, especially when that very anniversary is one marking a tricky business itself. A year on from the collapse of Lehman Brothers, perhaps the obvious choice is to flagrantly burn a wad of cash in the street, a sort of miniature funeral pyre to the ghost of the 160-year old bank. But for the more sensible among you a far more fascinating and less profligate way of marking the event would be to watch the The Love of Money: the bank that bust the world, which offers a truly extraordinary insight into the man behind Lehman Brothers—Dick Fuld.

This, the first episode of BBC2’s new three-part series (originally aired last Thursday, but still available to watch via BBC iplayer), is the story of the fateful weekend last September when the rotting carrion of the Lehman corpse started floating to the surface with a terrify speed. The man at the helm of the biggest bankruptcy in history, the reptilian Fuld, is a mesmerising figure, exhibiting a level of hubris which makes Oedipus look like a cautions fella. (See also City Boy’s thought on Fuld here).

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Dick Fuld: the man with the Midas touch?

Fuld: the stoic banker

A year on from one of the most traumatic events of all time in the financial market and we are all driven to a period of sober reflection. Well, almost all.

The media vultures are still pecking at the corpse of Lehman Brothers, 12 months after the fourth largest American investment bank collapsed.

In contrast to the heroic captain of James Cameron’s Titanic who stayed at the helm as the boat went down, Dick Fuld, Lehman’s erstwhile chief executive, was to watch his reputation sink with his ship. Also unlike Captain Smith, Fuld’s demise was not played out to “Nearer my God to thee” but to the soft thud of a former employee’s right hand as he was floored while exercising in the firm’s en-suite gym.

In many ways he has become the Midas figure of the crisis. After taking the reigns of the troubled investment bank in 1994 his rise to prominence was somewhat staggering. Within a decade Lehmans was challenging the mighty Goldman Sachs for dominance on Wall Street—these were golden days indeed! Read more »

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