The Devil's Casino_ Friendship, Betrayal - Vicky Ward [67]
respected analyst from HSBC Bank, to strengthen Lehman Europe.
Another notable hire that year was Holly Becker, from Salomon Smith Barney, who was
brought in to cover Internet equity research. At 43, Becker was the top-ranked Internet
research analyst on Wall Street, according to Institutional Investor, and was married to
Michael Zimmerman, one of the rising stars at Steve Cohen's hard-charging hedge fund,
SAC Capital.
With all its new hires, Lehman continued to prosper. One person who worked at Lehman
then says employees who had been asked to buy stock in 1998 made eight or nine times
their investment "within three years."
By the end of 2000, Lehman had opened offices in Rome, Stockholm, Amsterdam, and
Munich. The firm brought in revenues of $7.7 billion--and a net income of $1.78 billion.
It even joined forces with nemesis Goldman Sachs to lead a $3 billion global bond
offering for the World Bank, the first international bond offering to be marketed, sold,
and traded through the Internet to both retail and institutional investors.
On July 16, 2001, BusinessWeek wrote a laudatory piece under the headline: "Lehman
Brothers: So Who Needs to Be Big?" Lehman was proving that despite its smaller size, it
could compete with the titans of Wall Street--as Pettit had once dreamed. According to an
in -house history, senior management believed that Lehman's size was a chief selling
point: All aspects of the bank could service a client without conflict. The bankers didn't
contend with the traders. The "one firm" motto translated into profits. A corporate video
made that year shows an unusually relaxed Fuld boasting, "There are no walls here."
That year, as Lehman celebrated its 150th anniversary at a black-tie gala in the Museum
of the City of New York, it joined the S&P 500 index and its stock price rose above $100
for the first time.
Like the rest of the country, Lehman was prospering, and feeling mighty good about
itself.
Chapter 14
9/11
When you' re in one of these tragedies, people just do what they have to do, whatever that
is. Some are brave; some are not--they just do what they've got to do.
--Joe Gregory, "The Modern History"
Joe Gregory, watching the markets at his desk, thought he saw a plane streak across the
sky. He looked again out the window of his office and across the Hudson River, and saw
nothing but the glint and glare of the Hoboken skyline in the morning sun. Then the floor
beneath his feet shook with a terrible boom. It was 8:47 A.M.
Down the hall, on the 10th floor of 3 World Financial Center, Scott Freidheim's assistant,
Marna Ringel, rushed to the window in the offices of Lehman's headquarters and
screamed: "It's a bomb!"
Paul Cohen, a senior vice president who had been at Lehman longer than just about
anyone else, was in an office facing the Twin Towers. He went straight to Gregory and
said he thought a plane had hit the World Trade Center, maybe a twin-engine Cessna.
Dick Fuld's assistant, Marianne Burke, sat slumped at her desk, doing her best to remain
calm. As the phones began to ring all around her, Burke went to the window and saw a
terrifying confetti cloud of metal and dust rising from the ground.
Her boss was five miles away in midtown, having a Tuesday breakfast with clients.
When American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767 that was supposed to be en route from
Boston to Los Angeles, slammed into 1 World Trade Center on September 11, 2001,
Brian J. Bernstein was at his desk on the 38th floor. The tall building shook violently, and
Bernstein jumped out of his chair. He went to the window and saw a sheet of paper,
metal, and glass debris raining down. Bernstein was one of Lehman's 780 employees who
worked in the North Tower. The firm's technology development group occupied floors
38, 39, and 40.
Bernstein grabbed his wallet, keys, and Palm Pilot and headed for the fire escape
stairwell--already filling with panicked people fleeing the building, and by the time he
reached the 20th floor