Dick Fuld was never that skilled with the media when he was CEO of Lehman Brothers. Nearly seven years later, he still isn’t.
Mr. Fuld was the featured speaker at a small investment conference in Manhattan, which was an odd place to make his first public appearance since the Lehman bankruptcy. He seems to have been ill prepared for the attention, appearing nervous and riffing on Rocky, Vladimir Putin and Sigmund Freud.
After living as a virtual recluse for the past seven years, Mr. Fuld could command any stage he wanted. Any media organization – from CNBC to The Daily Show – would have given him a platform. An op-ed in The Wall Street Journal was his for the asking. But instead he rowed ashore from his self-imposed exile to keynote a conference for microcap companies. It was an unlikely place to reappear.
Of course, Mr. Fuld’s remarks were sure to reach far and wide, regardless of the venue. So why didn’t he put more thought into them? He knew the day would come when he would walk to a podium – or take the stand in a courtroom – and give his account of Lehman’s downfall. He must have played the scene in his mind countless times in the past seven years.
It would have been interesting to hear him give an impassioned defense of his leadership at Lehman or give a rebuttal to his many critics. Or better still to answer the damning report by Anton Valukas, the UK court-appointed examiner in the Lehman bankruptcy, who found Lehman used repo transactions to temporarily flatter its balance sheet at quarter-end.
Instead, Mr. Fuld blamed short-sellers, rumormongers and government officials who were unwilling to offer help, the very same explanation he gave in written testimony to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Committee in 2010.
Maybe his lawyers are advising him to stick to that script.
Nonetheless, it would have been interesting to hear him offer a better response. And he could have followed the path taken by other ex-Wall Street chiefs. He could have used the Hank Greenberg approach: Attack the government and thereby deflect criticism from your role in sinking the firm you led.
Or he could have done a Bob Diamond: Keep your middle finger raised high, take a short break then return to dealmaking, preferably on another continent.
Or, if he’d been truly imaginative and brave, Mr. Fuld might have done what no former Wall Street CEO has: Admit mistakes, draw lessons for the future and then do something useful with the rest of your life.