Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Quiz: How Could You Have Turned Two Lehman Leaders Into Twins?

The first snippett from Charles Gaspariono's new book, The Sellout: How Three Decades of Wall Street Greed and Government Mismanagement Destroyed the Global Financial System, is out with the answer:

At a dinner following Lehman's annual strategy seminar at the Marriott Hotel, [investment banking chief Michael] Madden got ready to give his remarks and have a little fun at [Lehman CEO Dick] Fuld's expense. "Everybody knows the guys who run our wonderful company," Madden said to a round of snickers from the half-drunk crowd, pointing to Fuld and [investment banker Tom] Hill in the front row. "It's Tom and Dick. Now, I haven't been here that long, but everybody tells me these guys go everywhere together and they're like twins. There's only one problem," he added with a smile, "they don't look like twins. But I know how to fix that. Tom, can you come up here?"

Hill got up, walked nervously to the podium, and stood beside Madden, who whipped out a large, hairy mask of a gorilla and promptly placed it over Hill's head." The place went wild. Even Hill thought the joke was funny. But not Dick Fuld, who shot Madden one of his famous death stares and didn't say another word to him for the entire evening and barely a word for the next year--when Madden, despite winning deals and establishing Lehman's investment bank as an increasingly potent competitor on deals, was fired.

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