Too Big to Fail [13]
What attracted him was not the fulfillment of some life-long dream about playing with other people’s money, but rather something far more visceral, something that instantly clicked. “I truly stumbled into investment banking,” he acknowledged years later. “Once I got exposed to it, I discovered that I actually understood it, and all the pieces fit.”
There was one person in the company, though, whom he didn’t really like: Lewis L. Glucksman, a rough-hewn, sloppily dressed muckety-muck from headquarters who occasionally dropped by the Denver office, intimidating and speaking gruffly to the crew. As keen as he was on landing a job in finance, Fuld swore he’d never work for this tyrant.
After graduating from college a semester late, in February 1969, he rejoined Lehman as a summer intern, this time working at the firm’s magnificent 1907 Italian Renaissance building at One William Street in the heart of Wall Street. He lived with his parents and commuted into the city. He worked on the desk that traded commercial paper—basically short-term IOUs used by companies to finance their day-to-day operations. For Fuld, the job was perfect except for one significant detail: He reported to Glucksman, who picked up rattling him right where he had left off in Denver.
Fuld didn’t mind all that much. He considered the job at Lehman temporary; he had eventually picked international business as his major at Colorado, and was determined to get his MBA. Halfway through his summer internship, he walked up to Glucksman and asked if he would write a letter of recommendation for him.
“Why the fuck do you want to do that?” Glucksman growled. “People go to graduate school to get in a position to get a job. I’m offering you a job.”
Fuld, however, wanted to stick to his plan.
“We don’t get along,” Fuld shot back. “You scream at me.”
“Stay here and you won’t have to work for me,” Glucksman told him.
Fuld agreed to remain at Lehman as he pursued his degree from New York University at night. He continued doing menial tasks, one of which was operating the firm’s latest technology—a video camera. One day he was taping an interview with Glucksman, when in the middle of the recording session, Glucksman asked, “Who’s behind the camera?” Fuld poked his head out.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked. “Come see me in my office first thing tomorrow morning.”
When Fuld appeared in his office the following day, Glucksman told him that it was ridiculous that he was doing “all this menial bullshit. Why don’t you just come work for me?”
“Do I get a raise?” asked Fuld.
The two became fast friends, and Fuld began his ascension at the firm. His salary was $6,000 a year, roughly 1/10,000 what he’d take home as the firm’s CEO some three decades later. By the end of the year, he was able to move out of his parents’ house and and rent a one-bedroom at 401 East Sixty-fifth Street for $250 a month. He drove to work in an orange Pontiac GTO, giving a lift to colleagues, including a young Roger C. Altman, who would later become the deputy Treasury secretary.
In Fuld, Glucksman saw himself as a young trader: “He didn’t let his emotions get the best of his judgment,” said Glucksman, who died in 2006. “Dick understood buys when they were buys and sells when they were sells. He was a natural.”
Every morning, as he walked onto the cramped trading floor, Fuld could feel his heart pounding with excitement. The noise. The swearing. Surviving by your wits alone. Trusting only your gut. He loved it all. As it happened, he had arrived at Lehman just as the firm was undergoing a major transformation that would benefit him