It's been a sad weekend (and month) watching Lehman Brothers circle the drain and ultimately go under last night.
For those that don't know, I worked as an investment banker at Lehman Brothers for four years, leaving earlier this year. Generally, the employment agreement for most bankers includes not discussing the job outside of the work context (and, accordingly, not blogging about it) so I've never said too much about it online.
Lehman was a truly outstanding company to work for and a great group of people to work with. I was always proud to be associated with the bank and I am still proud to have worked there. There was truly a focus on doing the right thing, not just for the client or the bank but the right thing, period. When I was in business school, out of all the banks that came to talk, only Lehman's CEO Dick Fuld took any time in to address the issue of ethics in his speech.
Obviously, there was some very serious mismanagement resulting in today's bankruptcy filing. But I hope Lehman won't be put in the same category with companies like Enron or Worldcom that mailed because of malfeasance and deception. As far as I'm aware, and as far as any of the present reports indicate, Lehman was simply a company that played hard right up to the final whistle in the face of a broad macroeconomic downturn and broad credit crisis. One wonders who may be next now that Lehman, Bear and Merrill are gone.
