It was the weekend of Sept. 13, and the moment Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. had feared for months was finally upon him: Lehman Brothers was hurtling toward bankruptcy -- fast.
Knowing that Lehman had billions of dollars in bad investments on its books, Mr. Paulson had long urged Lehman's chief executive, Richard S. Fuld Jr., to find a solution for his firm's problems. "He was asked to aggressively look for a buyer," Mr. Paulson recalled in an interview.