The Devil's Casino_ Friendship, Betrayal - Vicky Ward [62]
SUV. The waiting line of dark-glassed SUVs was almost comical to behold, according to
one attendee. It was like a scene from a movie depicting the motorcade waiting for a
landing president. Except this was not the president. This was just the Lehman Brothers
executive committee and their wives.
Kittredge also flew in personal chefs to cook the meals. "Breakfast was sublime," says
one diner. "It was the breakfast of your dreams."
The first meal of the day began promptly at 7:30 A.M. and ended an hour later. Then
Fuld would sit in a hard-backed armchair beside the fireplace in his drawing room with
the men in chairs and on sofas around him. Most of them would be wearing khakis and
golf shirts. (The group would break at 12:30 for lunch and golf.) The women meanwhile
shopped, biked, or went antiquing.
Everyone was supposed to be dressed appropriately.
This meant that men should wear khaki pants and either a golf shirt or a button-down.
Steve Lessing almost always wore a shirt with the logo from one of the dozen country
clubs he belonged to. Skip McGee usually wore a button-down shirt and khakis. Jesse
Bhattal stuck with his silk ascots.
But as the years went by, there were some nongolfers in the group who had no clue what
the dress code was and didn't much care. This was a grave mistake--Fuld cared what
people looked like, both in and out of the office. He always looked immaculate; he wore
a navy suit to work, purchased from Richards department store in Greenwich,
Connecticut, along with a white shirt, Hermes tie, and shiny black lace-ups in the British
shoemaker Church's style. He had a tailor put matching stitching in each of his suit pants
and jackets so he could easily see which tops went with which bottoms. "Sloppy dress,
sloppy thinking" went his motto.
Lehman was the last of all the Wall Street firms to go casual on Fridays. In the late 1990s
Fuld reluctantly called the operating committee to have a vote on whether they wanted it,
and to his dismay they all did. He sighed, "I don't know what this means." He reinforced
the point: "You know what? This democratic bullshit has gone on for long enough."
Gregory chimed in: "Oh, I don't want this either, Dick. We are a different generation. We
don't believe in it, but we have to do this for the younger people." Fuld compromised by
letting the entire firm go casual on Fridays except for the 10th (executive) floor. As he
agreed to it he said, "It is a dark day for the firm."
In the summer of 2006, Roger Nagioff--a London-based co-head of equities, who owns a
fleet of cars, including a Ferrari Daytona--arrived in Sun Valley and won the unofficial
"worst-dressed prize" when he showed up in army cargo pants and a black turtleneck
sweater. "I don't play golf and I do not apologize for that," Nagioff humorously
explained. "My clothes were far too cool but Dick made me change because he was
worried I would not be allowed on the course so I had to borrow some of those dreadful
golf clothes."
"Dick didn't lay off, teasing him mercilessly all weekend," recalls one witness. Matters
were not helped by Nagioff's atrocious beginner's golf. He was forced to play as part of
the team spirit for the Lehman Brothers Cup (a silver trophy).
A member of his foursome recalls the agony of the 18th hole. Nagioff's group, despite the
handicap of Nagioff, was in the lead. "All he had to do was to drive the ball. Now, if he'd
just stood down and taken a bye [in other words, not hit], we'd have been okay.
Unfortunately, he had a go, and touched the ball. . . . It went backwards way off the golf
course, straight into the junk." Nagioff disputes that he had a choice. "As the worst golfer
they had to count my best shot. I had to try." He does not dispute the outcome. It was a
disaster. The team had to take another stroke penalty. They lost. (Nagioff might have
done well to have followed the example of the inimitable Jesse Bhattal. Bhattal, too, had
been a beginner at golf until