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| Jon Macaskill is one of the leading capital markets and derivatives journalists, with over 20 years’ experience covering financial markets from London and New York. Most recently he worked at one of the biggest global investment banks |
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Hindsight has brought a consensus that Lehman and Bear Stearns represented Wall Street firms at their worst, where reckless trading heads ran roughshod over weak risk management controllers.
It is often forgotten that Lehman and Bear Stearns were both lauded by many for a supposedly superior ability to manage risk in the years running up to their failure in 2008.
Rating agencies proved gullible – as they did on other fronts. So did much of the media. But among the chilling details in the Lehman report were examples of the extent to which regulators such as the SEC and the Federal Reserve took nominally sophisticated risk management frameworks at face value.
In reality the few advocates of prudence within Lehman were sidelined as chief executive Dick Fuld and president Joe Gregory endorsed a push for growth that featured regular and enduring breaches of token risk limits.
