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Author’s Note Once upon a time, I was just like you. I grew up in a nice American neighborhood where I lived with my parents, sibling and dog, rode my bike, ate cold cereal for breakfast and played Little League baseball. Like many of you, when I graduated college, I tried to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. Never once did I ever wish to be an eyewitness to a murder. Yet, I was. There will always be human beings with extremely faulty judgment or exceptional greed The most important lesson to be learned from The Murder of Lehman Brothers is that in an industry as critical and potentially destabilizing as the finance industry, a new structure must be created to prevent such people from inflicting their questionable judgment or greed on the rest of us. Controls need to be strong, intelligent, and, most of all, enforced. No one person should ever have the power to wave his political wand, hobbling the safeguards that protect us all. This new structure will have to be designed so that those who are responsible for enforcement in the future are enabled and empowered in a manner that prevents very smart and highly motivated people from circumventing such regulation. This was not an easy book to write. The people inside Lehman were my esteemed colleagues and friends for many years. Despite what they may think or say, this is not a betrayal. As an eyewitness I am compelled to share the story of The Murder of Lehman Brothers with my fellow victims – those Americans who are today out of work or about to be, losing their homes, foregoing college educations for their children, worrying where their rent or next meal or health care will come from, and opting out of so many dreams, hopes and wishes for a bright future. You see, The Murder of Lehman Brothers is more than the story of the death of a great firm. The murder of Lehman Brothers is the singular event that became the lynchpin in the current global meltdown. If every American can understand how this happened and why, and what needs to permanently change in our own systems of government and finance, perhaps we, the people, can do a better job of making sure it never happens again. For ourselves. For our children. For our future. The only unvarnished account of the extraordinary financial meltdown as told by a company insider who was there to experience Lehman from its doldrums as an American Express property, its fortunes as Dick Fuld took the reins, and its devastating end.. The Murder of Lehman Brothers is the first Wall Street disaster story written solely by a veteran insider in many years. The Murder of Lehman Brothers: An Insider’s Take on the Global Meltdown, explains precisely why Lehman Brothers collapsed and is the first Meltdown tale told in the words and voice of a 20-year career veteran insider who was on site for the final act. The author, who joined Lehman before Richard Fuld ascended to CEO, pinpoints the corrupt few inside Lehman and the powerful and far more numerous misguided players outside its walls, who killed the firm and devastated financial markets. The Author This powerful account is told in his own words by Joseph Tibman (pseudo.), a senior banker who worked for more than 20 years at Lehman Brothers. His career was punctuated by many successes, working some of the financial industry’s largest, most high-profile deals.. Pre-order your copy on AMAZON.COM, other online booksellers, your local bookseller, or in these hard economic times — your public library. What is it with September, anyway? September is the month in which Hitler invaded Poland, the Great Fire of London occurred, Black September murdered 11 Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich, President McKinley was shot and killed, the Soviets and Cubans decided to defend Cuba with nuclear arms pointed at the U.S., , Princess Grace, our Grace Kelly, died in a fiery car crash in Monaco, the Galveston hurricane killed 8,000 people, and in which in 2001, America suffered the worst terrorist attack in its history. September. A perfect month for completion of a murder. In 2008, the victim was Lehman Brothers. But Lehman Brothers was not just a venerable Wall Street institution. It was home and even family to more than 26,000 employees whose livelihoods and very way of life disappeared overnight. While the media covered the event as only a part of the Global Meltdown of 2008, few Americans truly understand the keystone nature of Lehman Brothers in the financial arch of that great institution called Wall Street. Even fewer have any real understanding of how and why Lehman and only Lehman dissolved; who was really responsible; and why Lehman’s fall became the lynchpin in the current economic crisis we are buried under today. The author has written this narrative in the hope that Wall Street, the global financial markets, the U.S. government and the citizens it represents may learn lessons from this chronicle and attempt to bring change that protects us all from another meltdown. While the pundits, government, media and others continue to scratch their heads and ponder what will become of the U.S. market, everyday Americans continue to lose their jobs in the ripple effect of the meltdown. How did this happen? On the first anniversary of the murder of Lehman, Joseph Tibman, a 20-year veteran and senior investment banker, has come forward to reveal, in plain English, the people and forces that share responsibility for this catastrophe. His very personal and honest account is told as only a true Lehman insider’s account could be told, by someone who spent two decades at the firm making it his second home. This is the real deal – the true story of ignorance, hubris, faulty judgment and special interests, told by a corporate insider who came of age in the company when Shearson Lehman was owned by American Express, before Richard Fuld became its sole CEO, just prior to the company’s spin-off from American Express, the incredible experience of 9/11, right through the bitter end. Writing under the pseudonym Joseph Tibman, the author bares all in The Murder of Lehman Brothers. He explains the feud that erupted, soon after the death of the last Lehman Family CEO, between the two “houses” of Lehman – the investment bankers, those patrician, finely appointed, old-money denizens and the sales and trading group, brown-bagging, scrappy warriors — which ended in the bloody near-death of both sides of the house with the company’s sale to American Express. He provides the most detailed account on record of the rise of Dick Fuld from junior trader to CEO; Fuld, an executive Trojan gift-horse presented to the company by Harvey Golub, CEO of American Express; Fuld, nicknamed “the Gorilla” because of his legendary inarticulateness, who rose above his nickname just once, but profoundly, at the seminal, game-changing moment of the 9/11 attacks. The story of indulgence and responsibility does not end with Fuld and his inner circle. The Murder of Lehman Brothers is the story of greed run amok. The story is told in the words of someone who was there when Lehman, post 9/11, became the firm that always outperformed; someone who was a witness to what a small handful of people inside Lehman did to crush it with the assistance of misguided and inept politicians and a dysfunctional, antiquated regulatory infrastructure. For the first time, Joe Tibman shares information and detail about Lehman Brothers and the economic meltdown that has never before been revealed: How Lehman Brothers almost went under 10 years earlier but was, in a lucky turn of events, rescued from the brink of disaster. How, in the most detailed and intimate account of Lehman after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack, when the firm and its people were ripped from their home, Fuld’s “One Firm” strategy finally took root, sweeping away the vestiges of internal war inside Lehman’s own halls, turning tragedy to triumph for a newly united firm where survival and success meant much more than a payday. What role did Paulsen play? Cox? Bernanke? Greenspan? Geithner? Clinton? Phil Gramm? Congress? What role did George W. Bush and his administration play in creating conditions that toppled the financial markets? Could the current crisis have been averted? Read how SEC Inspector General David Kotz shouted to all who would listen that lawyers and a financial firm interfered and lost an opportunity to potentially head-off the crisis. How much does Congress really understand about the financial markets? How did PBFS – Post-Bailout Fatigue Syndrome – fuel the murder of Lehman and the resultant crumbling of the financial markets? No reporter has ever been able to uncover why the rating agencies rated subprime securities so high. These agencies have never come clean with a clear statement on this issue. They just fired subprime analysts. For the first time in this book, Tibman discloses key factors behind the subprime rating disaster. The Murder of Lehman Brothers: An Insider’s Guide to the Global Meltdown is not only for those who earn their livings (or used to) working in the financial markets. It is written simply for anyone who wants to understand the perfect storm of screw-ups that has led to the current global meltdown. It is a primer that explains why action must be taken to ensure no one person or small group is ever again in a position to dismantle the system or to bet the bank, bringing down major institutions and threatening the collapse of the entire global economy. |
