Sixteen years after Lehman Brothers’ collapse, Jefferies CEO Richard Handler has shared the e-mail he despatched to the financial institution’s former CEO, Richard “Dick” Fuld, on the day the agency filed for the biggest chapter in U.S. historical past.
In a sequence of Instagram posts over the weekend, Handler revealed the alternate with Fuld, which occurred simply earlier than Lehman’s fall despatched the worldwide financial system right into a tailspin.
“I met you very briefly once, and although it is of absolutely no help to you right now, I want you to know that I have always been in awe of the company you built,” Handler wrote to Fuld three days earlier than the collapse. He added that he had “modeled much of Jefferies” on the monetary big.
On September 15, 2008, when Lehman Brothers filed for chapter with greater than $600 billion in debt, Handler despatched a last e mail to Fuld: “I am so very sorry for you and the special company that you built.”
Fuld responded two weeks later, thanking Handler for his “note of support” and “for thinking of me (and) the firm.”
Classes from Lehman’s Collapse
Lehman Brothers, the 158-year-old financial institution that had survived the 1929 Wall Avenue crash, was deemed “too big to fail.” On the time, Jefferies Group was a rising funding financial institution, with Handler having just lately taken the helm.
Reflecting on the collapse, Handler mentioned the disaster provided “life-saving lessons,” together with that “arrogance always kills” and “life will go on.”
By 2009, Jefferies had remodeled from a small fairness buying and selling store to a major seller for the New York Fed, permitting it to take part within the open-market shopping for and promoting of securities—vital to the Federal Reserve’s operations.
Handler’s 10 classes:
1. There is no such thing as a such factor as a “slight liquidity crisis”
2. Every part in life is fragile
3. Generally unhealthy issues occur to good folks
4. By no means take something or anybody as a right
5. Leverage can’t distinguish between good or unhealthy, however it would fortunately (enlarge) each
6. You by no means have as a lot time as it’s possible you’ll assume
7. Character is decided throughout powerful occasions
8. Conceitedness all the time kills
9. In case your debt holders are in danger, your shareholders will most likely be worn out
10. Should you keep optimistic by way of the storm, the solar all the time ultimately rises, and life will go on.
See the e-mail alternate
@Handlerrich—Instagram
The place is Dick Fuld now?
Fuld ran Lehman for 14 years earlier than the financial institution collapsed.
Within the years that adopted, Fuld repeatedly blamed the federal government (and their very aggressive push to extend homeownership) for Lehman’s loss of life, earlier than proudly owning as much as some “bad judgments” years later.
Regardless of being the self-confessed “most hated man in America,” Fuld has nonetheless managed to take care of a profession within the monetary trade.
In the present day, the 78-year-old is working Matrix Non-public Capital Group which presents funding recommendation to “high-net-worth” shoppers.
In his first (and final) speech for the reason that monetary crash, in 2015, Fuld mentioned: “Whatever it is, enjoy the ride. No regrets.”
