Big bad wolf of Wall Street
QUESTION How are the former directors of Lehman Brothers doing now? Are they destitute and living ‘in reduced circumstances’? IN SEPTEMBER 2008, lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy have racked up more than $600 billion (£360 billion) in debts.
The investment bank had been heavily leveraged, had invested in the sub-prime mortgage business and held billions of dollars of toxic debt.
The main man at lehman, the long-time chief executive officer and chairman, was Richard ‘ Dick’ Severin fuld Jr. On September 17, 2008, fuld sold 2.87 million of his lehman shares for 20 cents each, cashing out with $639,082 from a position valued a year earlier at more than $168 million.
In 2009, he started Matrix advisors, a firm that provides executive strategic counselling. In early 2012, he lost his securities licence and now has no Wall Street employment.
Oliver Budde, a lawyer who worked at lehman on regulatory matters, calculated that fuld made $529.4 million (about £326 million) between 2000 and 2007. fuld himself claimed it was closer to $350 million (£210 million).
He still owns houses in Sun valley, Idaho, said to be worth $19 million (£11.4 million), and on Jupiter Island, florida, for which he paid around $14 million (£8.4 million) in 2004. In 2009, he sold his Park avenue apartment for $ 25.9 million (£15.5 million) but still owns a mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Conde Nast Portfolio ranked fuld as the worst american CEO of all time.
Joe Gregory, former COO and president, was responsible for much of the company’s risk-taking activity. He is one of lehman’s largest individual creditors, with a total claim of $ 233 million in deferred compensation.
Since leaving lehman, Gregory has been in the news for selling several of his properties, antiques and vehicles. He sold the helicopter he used to fly from his long Island home to Manhattan and fired his household staff of 29.
His Bridgehampton home, listed for $ 32.5 million, sold for $ 20 million to advertising mogul Donny Deutsch, and another property at lloyd Harbour, Ny, sold for a similar amount.
Erin Callan was chief financial officer at lehman in the run-up to the collapse. She was abruptly fired by her mentor, fuld, following a conversation which revealed publicly lehman’s problems.
She was able to cash out her shares before the firm collapsed. She manages her $4 million estate in East Hampton, the long Island summer playground for affluent New yorkers.
Hugh ‘Skip’ McGee III, former global head of investment banking, is now the head of investment banking at Barclays Capital. Michael Gelband, former head of capital markets, works for hedge fund Millennium Management.
Scott freidheim, former investment bank executive, was hired to run European operations of Investcorp Bank BSC. He’s CEO of Europe for the Bahrain-based bank. Clearly, losing $600 billion isn’t too harmful to those at the top.
L. P. Carruthers, Edinburgh.
QUESTION I’ve read that the mystery writer Edgar Allen Poe died in 1849 in ‘mysterious circumstances’. What were these? Edgar Allan POE, who was born on January 19, 1809, and died just over 40 years later on October 7, 1849, was one of the greatest american romantic writers.
His parents were actors, and when both died within a relatively short time, he went to live with John and frances allan with whom he remained for some time despite arguments concerning his profligacy, particularly his gambling debts.
Having failed as a military cadet at West Point academy, he professed a wish to become a poet and writer of stories. This he did with some success, notably with the publication of The Raven, which brought him great acclaim. His aim was to produce a magazine called The Penn, but he died before his plan could be realised.
The cause of his untimely demise is almost as mysterious as one of his own tales with several reasons being mooted: delirium tremens, a congestive brain condition/meningitis, syphilis, epilepsy, cholera, even rabies. The latter was given as a reason by a study of Poe’s hospital record, which stated that he was suffering delirium after being found in a parlous state in the street, but had lucid moments during the time he was hospitalised, which would not have been the case had he been undergoing alcohol withdrawal.
There was also a claim he had been the victim of ‘cooping’, a practice by which unscrupulous election representatives latched onto unsuspecting or incapable ‘marks’ and steered them to various polling booths to vote for the candidate they were employed by.
Sometimes such practices ended badly with the unfortunate voter floating facedown in the river or poisoned by the massive amounts of alcohol used to make them more conducive.
as Poe had not touched alcohol for some time this particular theory is mere speculation, unless he had, in fact, fallen off the wagon in spectacular fashion.
Sally Straughan, Peterborough, Cambs.
QUESTION How many regiments that took part in the Battle of Waterloo are still with us today? Further to the earlier answer, one of the cavalry regiments at Waterloo was The Royal Dragoons (1st Dragoons). Until that regiment’s amalgamation with The Royal Horse Guards in 1969, the cap badge of The Royals was a Napoleonic Eagle captured by them at Waterloo.
On amalgamation, the Eagle was (and is) worn on the upper left sleeve on all uniforms of the Regiment — The Royal Horse Guards and The Royal Dragoons (1st Dragoons), now known as The Blues & Royals.
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