From the category archives:

Lehman Brothers

Return of the Pharaohs of Misjudgment

September 7, 2010

Conrad Black is back at his (temporary) winter home in Palm Beach after being freed on bail pending the outcome of his appeal.  His conservative friends in their College of Cardinals-type media conclaves appear to seek his beatification for what he has gone through. If he is found to have been wrongly convicted, as countless [...]

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Outrage of the Week: Alice in Boardland and Other Fairy Tales About Lehman Brothers

April 23, 2010

Leonard Lance, (R.NJ): Mr. Cruikshank, to follow up in your remarks.   Do you believe there were corporate governance failures at Lehman? Thomas Cruikshank, Chairman, Lehman board auit committee: No, I don’t. I think our governance procedures were really very, very good. House Committee on Financial Services, April 20, 2010 A number of revealing facts emerged from [...]

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The Examiner of Lehman’s Untoasted Boardroom Marshmallows

March 14, 2010

The court-appointed Examiner chose to continue the same lackadaisical approach to directorial performance and accountability in his search for answers as the directors themselves evidenced in their drowsy drift toward disaster. A little noted statement in the report of the court-appointed Examiner in the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy reveals the extent of the deference displayed to [...]

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“Catch Me if You Can” and Other Fine Relics from the Lehman Boardroom

March 11, 2010

Once again, an inept board escapes culpability through a Houdini-like contrivance called the business judgment rule, one of the most anti-shareholder and destructive of legal principles ever to emerge in modern times. Lehman Brothers made a brief return in the news today, just long enough to fall into another abyss of folly and misjudgment that [...]

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The Lehman CEO as Superman, and Other Myths in an Era of Underwhelming and Overpaid Leaders

October 8, 2008

When the market is going up, much of the world treats CEOs like superheroes who are worth every penny of the extraordinary sums they command. But when fate and fortune retreat and reverse direction, these CEOs suddenly claim only to be human, an attribute with which they had previously never shown much familiarity. It was, [...]

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Curtain Falls on the One-Man Show at Lehman Brothers

September 14, 2008

What an American civil war, two world wars and the Great Depression could not do has now been achieved by something called the subprime credit crisis, along with the assistance of an overly deferential corporate governance system that was blind to the risks being faced and a Napoleonesque CEO who could not see the disaster [...]

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The Christmas-in-July Stock Giveaway at Lehman Brothers

July 3, 2008

Maybe the fabled investment bank is getting to the point where only employees will be interested in holding the stock of a company whose chief products recently have been poor judgment and bad results The firm lost a record $2.8 billion in the last quarter. Much more in write-downs has been registered. The stock stands [...]

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What Shell is the CEO Bonus Under at Lehman Brothers?

June 25, 2008

It rather neatly illustrates the farce that CEO pay has largely become when Lehman Brothers chief Richard S. Fuld, Jr. announces that he will decline a bonus this year. The board compensation committee has not yet met to determine if one would even be offered to him. But that probably is just a formality because [...]

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Will the Real Richard Fuld Please Stand Up?

June 16, 2008

Which hat was Mr. Fuld wearing when he said he took responsibility? And where was the Lehman board while this crisis was unfolding? No one bothered to ask. Lehman Brothers formally reported today what it had announced last week: a staggering $2.8 billion loss for the second quarter. At a conference call, CEO Richard S. [...]

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