Lehman Brothers 'Terrifying' Culture Exposed In New Book 'The Devil's Casino' (VIDEO)

The Lehman Brothers' corporate culture was "terrifying," says Vicky Ward, the author of the new book "The Devil's Casino" about the company's collapse. In an interview on "The Today Show," Ward spoke about the corrupt and bizarre inner workings of the Lehman Brothers and the sad human story behind the mess. She described a culture in which people would be fired for wearing the wrong clothes to a golf game, let alone disagreeing with the senior management's practices.

"The Devil's Casino" uses a series of memos from the senior executives of the Lehman Brothers provided to Ward that turned out to be what she calls "Lehmangate." The book, though, is really about the human story behind the collapse, says Ward:

The tragedy of the story is that you see money and Wall Street corrupt [the Lehman Brothers founders]. And you see their marriages break down, you see their friendships break down.

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Comments

[dmkasprzak]

10:42 AM on 04/08/2010

With so much research and teaching having been done over the past 60 years or so on what not to do in corporate America, it's daunting that this sort of behvior continues to exist - with what appear to be very predictable results. Even a quick look at those companies who have instituted employee-first cultures, incuding Zero-layoff policies and indistry leading salary and benefits reveals a great deal of success. If there is a silver lining to be found in the Lehman case, it is that yet another hierarchical, tyranical corporate culture has fallen. Perhaps this will help push us just a little closer to understanding that there is, indeed, a better way.

[andycan]

11:35 PM on 03/23/2010

If you think that the "culture" of Blankfein's Goldman Sachs or Dimon's JP Morgan Chase is any different from Lehman's, you gotta be out of your mind!

[GRagsdale]

01:05 PM on 03/23/2010

So WHO gave her the diaries?????!

[Torrentlover]

06:32 AM on 03/23/2010

Let me get this straight, these supposedly intelligent employees needed additional bonus money in order to be retained because they were in demand by competitors, yet they endured this crap?

Either the competitors are similar or hardly anyone in investment banking is as important as they try to make themselves out to be.

[cognitivereddawn]

12:11 AM on 03/23/2010

No one recognized the cult within a bank which, by definition, is supposed to be the pinnacle of fiduciary trust?

[blastocyst]

10:16 PM on 03/22/2010

We'll forget and we'll repeat history because collectively we're casual historians with the attention-span of a(n)________[ fill-in the blank ]