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and Niki, Brad and I. We were using Joe's helicopter. But I said, 'I have to take my son to

the pediatrician.' So they landed the Sikorsky near our home and waited for me, and they

were not leaving without me. Can you imagine the pressure? I have this really sick child,

but I know that if I don't get on that helicopter, it's going to hurt Brad. (Her husband

agreed.)

"[The Fulds] paid a lot of lip service to the importance of children and your family, but

no one really cared."

Another executive who found this to be true was Shafir, who by 2000 had replaced

Gregory as co-head of global equities, along with Roger Nagioff. By 2004, he was sole

head. In 2005, according to Andrew Ross Sorkin's Too Big to Fail, Shafir discovered that

he had a child with cystic fibrosis and he asked for time off. When he returned, he was

demoted from the executive committee to run hedge funds. Several months later, Gregory

asked him to move to Asia.

Shafir reportedly replied: "Asia? You have to be kidding, Joe. You know about my kid. . .

." Gregory didn't care, and didn't budge. In 2007 Shafir quit, moving to Credit Suisse.

Niki Gregory was as skillful a political operator as her husband--and just as ambitious.

Some of the wives were a little intimidated by her, while others were just cautious.

One time in Sun Valley, both Brad and Karin Jack noticed that Niki Gregory was

ignoring Martha McDade, the wife of Bart McDade, who was then running fixed income.

Martha was a civil engineer who had founded her own environmentally focused

engineering company as well as a charity to help improve the lives of amputees. "She

was a smart woman who was always herself, just a fabulous person," said one wife. On

that Sun Valley trip, Martha asked some of the other wives: "Why will Niki Gregory not

look at or talk to me?" Jack immediately interpreted the snub as a sign that Bart McDade

was likely to be demoted or fired.

In early summer 2005, not long after the incident, McDade was moved from the position

of head of fixed income to replace Shafir as the head of equities. Some saw the move as a

demotion, but McDade was so successful in his new job that it simply increased his

power base within the firm. Now two huge divisions respected him.

After McDade's demotion, the wives realized that their husbands' fates at Lehman would

first become evident within their own circle: that, in fact, the social dynamics of the firm

would initially play out among themselves. "The women can't hide their disdain for

someone they know is on the way out. It 's like the herd leaving someone with a broken

leg behind," one says.

Chapter 13

The Young Lions

One of the great things about our firm is that if one of our people wants to get something

done, such as finding the best doctor in the world, Lehman Brothers is small enough and

flat enough that people are accessible where that can happen.

--Steve Lessing

In the 1990s Dick Fuld tried to make sure that at least one person in his entourage was

whip-smart and unafraid to tell him the truth. The only way to do this was to appoint

someone near him who would be content to remain under him, and be docile with regard

to the rest of the senior team. "Dick was clever about this," says Tom Hill. "He found a

young talent who wouldn't jostle the rest."

Until April 1996, Mike Odrich, Fuld's chief of staff, had been that person. Odrich was

immensely likable, very bright, and completely loyal. He had attended Stanford and

Columbia Business School. He had a single-digit handicap in golf. He had suited Fuld

perfectly. But it was time for him to move on and build up Lehman's fledgling private

equity division, which at that point consisted of little more than a merchant bank. Odrich

's last big job as Fuld's chief of staff was to find his own replacement. Fuld asked Odrich

to bring him the sharpest young brain in the firm.

Odrich sent him a redheaded graduate of Northwestern University with an MBA from the

Kellogg School of Management named