Former Lehman CEO: Our bank was about the client and our 'real success' was our culture

By Julia La Roche, Linette Lopez & Jonathan Marino

Richard "Dick" Fuld made a keynote address today at the Marcum MicroCap Conference in Midtown Manhattan.
It's his first public speech since the demise of Lehman in 2008.

"Lehman was one of the great Wall Street banks," Fuld told the crowd.

He also touted the firm's culture as part of its "success."

Fuld was one those people who was blamed for the crisis. He pointed that it was a "perfect storm" of easy credit that started with the government's desire to have "everybody to be able to fulfill their view of the American dream."

Before its bankruptcy, Lehman Brothers was at the time the fourth largest Wall Street bank.

"I had 27,000 risk managers because all employees owned a piece of the firm," said Fuld.

There has been speculation that Fuld was re-entering public life because he wants to start a new firm, but he didn't talk about any future plans at Marcum.

He mostly waxed philosophical about Lehman - or rather, what Lehman used to be.

Fuld said that when he joined the company in the late 1960s. "My mentor was [another ex-Lehman CEO] Lew Glucksman." At times, he seemed to ignore the history of Lehman's ultimate demise, referring to "the modern Lehman." He also called it "one of the great investment banks on Wall Street."
"The key differentiator was culture. There was no turf."
The turf war that ultimately ended Lehman's partnership structure is well documented in Ken Auletta's Greed and Glory on Wall Street. That's the story of how the Fuld's mentor, Lew Glucksman, the bank's head of trading, feuded with Pete Peterson, the bank's head of investment banking.

The ensuing battle ended with Lehman selling itself and changing forever.

Maybe Fuld slightly mis-remembers a few things?