Richard S. Fuld, Jr.

Richard Severin Fuld, Jr. ( born April 26, 1946 in New York City ) was the last chairman and chief executive officer of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers. He held his position since 1994 (since the separation from American Express) - along with Joseph Gregory as deputy - to the insolvency of the company on 15 September 2008.

Curriculum vitae

Fuld not graduated from an elite American university like his rival Henry Paulson of Goldman Sachs, but in 1969 at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The M.B.A. he acquired in 1973 by New York University 's Stern School of Business. 1969 Fuld rose at Lehman Brothers as a securities dealer, after he had with his superiors ended his career as a pilot in the U.S. Air Force because of a fight abruptly.

In two crises Fuld has proven itself at Lehman Brothers and greatly strengthened his reputation:

In 2007, Fuld, his nickname Gorilla through humor is ( " I'm the only banker whose arms down to the floor rich " ) and a stuffed gorilla copy selbstironisierte in his office, have earned $ 45 million, his remuneration in the years 1993-2007 are estimated at USD 500 million. Similar to the case of Barings Bank, the payments underlying corporate profits were increased by excessive leveraging. Lehman Brothers was accused under Fuld's leadership to have assigned to each dollar equity $ 35 in loans. In connection with the massive price declines for American Real Estate 2008, many non-performing loans have become of it. After the U.S. government had three major banks ( Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) supported with billions of dollars, was the political pressure to absorb any additional banks become so great that the then U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson after the cancellation of the Barclays Bank, to participate in Lehman, did not provide further support, which - led to the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers - contrary to the previous principle too big to fail. A few days after the bankruptcy only 170 employees worked for Lehman Brothers, 24988 had been terminated. Fuld held at the time of insolvency 10.9 million Lehman shares to have had a value of $ 1 billion.

Fuld is married to Kathleen Fuld and has three children. His 13 - million-dollar estate on Jupiter Island, Florida before he transferred to his wife. Unlike the managers of Enron Fuld, who provided Lehman Brothers in the years 1998-2008 for campaign contributions to politicians of all parties $ 6,704,574, was never prosecuted criminally.

In 2009 he founded in New York consulting firm matrix.

Memberships

Due to the huge increase in profits of Lehman Brothers, which were connected in retrospect with incalculable risk increases, Fuld became a member, partially volunteer, in many institutions, such as the Federal Reserve Bank or the Robin Hood Foundation.

Honors and criticism

• 2006 appointed the magazine Institutional Investor Magazine Fuld to the highest American chief executive. In the list of the worst American CEO of all time Portfolio.com ranked him in the first place, has that even Bernard L. Madoff "sorry" said the note.
• After the financial crisis of 2008 took him Time magazine's list of the 25 people who were most responsible for the crisis.