Power, Greed and Glory on Wall Street: the Fall of the Lehman Brothers
BYLINE: By Ken Auletta; Ken Auletta is an author and newspaper columnist whose most recent book is ''The Art of Corporate Success.''
SECTION: Section 6; Page 29, Column 1; Magazine Desk
LENGTH: 11488 words
FOR YEARS THE RESENTMENT HAD been building. And now, at lunch, it began to erupt. Lewis Glucksman, the co-chief executive officer of Lehman Broth-ers Kuhn Loeb, a short, rumpled man with the face of a Russian general, who was disparaged by Wall Street blue bloods as a lowly ''trader,'' Lew Glucksman would leave the lunch table determined to remove Peter G. Peterson, his imperious co-C.E.O. at the venerable investment banking house, from his job. The luncheon took place on July 12, 1983, and the fallout from the explosion it triggered carried the sto-ry from the business pages to the front pages.
Thirteen days later, Peterson, a celebrated success story - president of Bell & Howell at the age of 34, Secretary of Commerce under President Nixon and the man who had helped rescue Lehman from collapse in 1973 - would be forced out of the firm he had helped steer to five consecutive record profit years.
Ten months later, Wall Street's oldest continuing investment banking partnership, a firm that had survived for 134 years (box, page 31), would fail to survive the reign of Lewis L. Glucksman and would be sold to Shearson/American Express, one of the great whales that now dominate Wall Street.
This is the story of the fall of Lehman Brothers, pieced together over a period of 10 months. It represents some 45 hours of interviews with Peterson and about 30 hours with Glucksman. It also represents extensive interviews with all the members of Lehman's board of directors, with 34 active or former partners, with numerous as-sociates, with employees and people on and around Wall Street. Many internal Leh-man documents and financial records were reviewed. Descriptions of events have been confirmed by participants, including adversaries.
What emerges is a modern
SECTION: Section 6; Page 29, Column 1; Magazine Desk
LENGTH: 11488 words
FOR YEARS THE RESENTMENT HAD been building. And now, at lunch, it began to erupt. Lewis Glucksman, the co-chief executive officer of Lehman Broth-ers Kuhn Loeb, a short, rumpled man with the face of a Russian general, who was disparaged by Wall Street blue bloods as a lowly ''trader,'' Lew Glucksman would leave the lunch table determined to remove Peter G. Peterson, his imperious co-C.E.O. at the venerable investment banking house, from his job. The luncheon took place on July 12, 1983, and the fallout from the explosion it triggered carried the sto-ry from the business pages to the front pages.
Thirteen days later, Peterson, a celebrated success story - president of Bell & Howell at the age of 34, Secretary of Commerce under President Nixon and the man who had helped rescue Lehman from collapse in 1973 - would be forced out of the firm he had helped steer to five consecutive record profit years.
Ten months later, Wall Street's oldest continuing investment banking partnership, a firm that had survived for 134 years (box, page 31), would fail to survive the reign of Lewis L. Glucksman and would be sold to Shearson/American Express, one of the great whales that now dominate Wall Street.
This is the story of the fall of Lehman Brothers, pieced together over a period of 10 months. It represents some 45 hours of interviews with Peterson and about 30 hours with Glucksman. It also represents extensive interviews with all the members of Lehman's board of directors, with 34 active or former partners, with numerous as-sociates, with employees and people on and around Wall Street. Many internal Leh-man documents and financial records were reviewed. Descriptions of events have been confirmed by participants, including adversaries.
What emerges is a modern