The Devil's Casino_ Friendship, Betrayal - Vicky Ward [56]
Yet Gregory's dictated notes in 2002 show that he went berserk over Cecil's hesitation.
"In 1998 John was both CFO and CAO at a time of great stress when everyone was
dumping our stock and it got down to 22 and as low as 19 intraday," Gregory wrote. "We
needed the CFO to say the firm is financially sound. John responded that he wasn't sure
he could say that for threat of being sued. It happened on a conference call and I
remember it like it was two seconds ago. We were all at home on the conference call and
when he said that, we all went nuts. How could he say that? We were trying to keep the
company alive--12 or 13 thousand people's lives were at stake."
Cecil points out that there were not 13,000 lives at stake, since the firm only comprised
7,500 at the time. He also says it did take him a while to get a detailed portrait of the
balance sheet together and he wasn't going to rush something so important, nor was he
going to tell investors things were okay without giving them solid proof. He has
absolutely no recollection of Gregory's reaction, though he remembers the business heads
were anxious to placate the market. He was, too, but he was going to make sure of his
facts first.
Fuld, according to sources, shared Gregory's frustration with their CFO, who stood his
ground. They felt this was a time for Chris Pettit's mantra of team, team, team and instead
Cecil was holding out on the firm.
In the end--after two weeks of careful analysis, and only when he was truly happy with
the financials--Cecil signed. He still believes he was absolutely right to take his time. He
reflected recently: "I might point out that if the same care had been taken ten years later
on the signing off on the financials, Lehman might have avoided all sorts of problems. It
might even still be alive."
Following the earnings report, the SEC ended its investigation and things appeared to
return to normal.
A colleague says that Fuld never forgave what he viewed as recalcitrance on the part of
Cecil, and he made him pay for it down the road. Tom Russo says that although he
believed Cecil was just being "meticulous . . . others thought that he was just more
worried about himself than the firm."
Cecil thought the episode was over and just wanted to get on with his job. He was startled
when he later heard what Gregory thought of him. Gregory wrote that "he was a man who
thought he was going to be 'offered the keys to the city' but 'Dick didn't really want him
in that job.' John made a series of mistakes and some really bad ones, especially in 1998,
that made Dick very uncomfortable with John."
When asked what ultimately happened to Cecil, Bob Genirs wrote succinctly to a
colleague: "Joe shot him."
Dick Fuld admitted to his senior managers that he had learned two things from 1998.
Before the Russian crisis, he believed that talking to the press never worked out. "I was
wrong," he said during one of the summer retreats he held for his executive committee.
"It was one of the major lessons I needed to learn."
The other was that there was no time to lose.
Lehman could not stay vulnerable. Goldman Sachs was now finally going to float--offer
its shares to the public on the stock market. He urged everyone at the company, whenever
he could, to "bleed Lehman green."
"I want you to make money for this company," he said to everyone on staff. "Just keep
thinking about ways to make money."
Lehman had already opened offices in Tel Aviv, Beijing, and Singapore in the mid1990s. In addition to broker -dealers in Mexico, they had a banking license in Tokyo, a
reporting dealer who was able to make trades in France, and a primary dealer closely
monitoring the central bank in Italy. Fuld wanted Lehman's stock price to get up to $150
per share.
In 1999, Bradley Jack was promoted to be the sole head of banking; Cecil was still CFO
and chief administrative officer (CAO); Vanderbeek was still head of global fixed
income; Gregory was still head of equities; Michael McKeever was co -head of private