Danny Schechter - ColdType

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worse. The Business and Media institute reported: “While
former Lehman CEO Richard Fuld was testifying before the
House Oversight Committee Oct. 6, CNBC reported he had
been punched in the face at the Lehman Brothers gym after it
was announced the firm was going bankrupt.
From two very senior sources – one incredibly senior source
– that he went to the gym after … Lehman was announced
as going under. He was on a treadmill with a heart monitor
on. Someone was in the corner, pumping iron and he walked
over and he knocked him out cold. And frankly after having
watched this, I’d have done the same too.
Lehman filed for bankruptcy in September 2008. Its assets
were later snatched up for a relative song by the British bank
Barclays for $1.35 billion, which included Lehman’s Midtown
Manhattan office tower supposedly worth $960 million. The
firm only paid a third of that when they acquired the building
from American Express Shearson.
Later, in a move to limit his personal liability by transferring
ownership of a home, Fuld “sold” a multi-million dollar mansion
in Florida to his own wife for just $10.
Fuld’s leadership and Lehman’s bankruptcy has led to a
flood of lawsuits. Wealth Daily reported a few weeks later:
Just in the last few weeks, the San Mateo County (California)
Investment Pool formally filed suit against Fuld, Callahan and
other top Lehman execs, seeking reimbursement for financial
losses after Lehman’s fall to bankruptcy. The San Mateo
lawsuit is among the first in the country to go after Lehman’s
top brass … and the $1 billion-plus in bonuses they were
able to siphon off before the firm tanked.
According to the lawsuit, the Lehman case “represents the
worst example of fraud committed by modern-day robber barons
of Wall Street, who targeted public entities to finance their
risky practices and then paid themselves hundreds of millions of
dollars in compensation while their companies deteriorated.”