You would think that a guy who once put someone in a chokehold during a boardroom meeting, told a trader who asked him a question he didn’t like, “I ought to break your legs for that,” got into physical altercations with other parents at his son’s hockey games, ate without utensils, and threatened to smash an iron through the face of everyone shorting his company and then bite of each and everyone of their fingers one by one would like being nicknamed “The Gorilla.” Good for inspiring fear, macho, proves he can grow facial hair, whatever. If we’re talking about Dick Fuld, however, who apparently started every morning by standing in front of the mirror, scrutinizing his resemblance to Cro-Magnon Man, spent an hour each afternoon with a physical therapist attempting to train his knuckles to not drag on the ground as he walked, and considered bringing in someone to help him speak in complete sentences (rather than grunts), you’d think wrong. Obviously this heretofore unknown image issue is broached by Charlie Gasparino, in his new book (out today!), The Goddamn Beatin’ That Bear Stearns (And Others) Took:
At a dinner following Lehman’s annual strategy seminar at the Marriott Hotel, investment banking chief Michael] Madden got ready to give his remarks and have a little fun at Fuld’s expense. “Everybody knows the guys who run our wonderful company,” Madden said to a round of snickers from the half-drunk crowd, pointing to Fuld and [investment banker Tom] Hill in the front row. “It’s Tom and Dick. Now, I haven’t been here that long, but everybody tells me these guys go everywhere together and they’re like twins. There’s only one problem,” he added with a smile, “they don’t look like twins. But I know how to fix that. Tom, can you come up here?”
Hill got up, walked nervously to the podium, and stood beside Madden, who whipped out a large, hairy mask or a gorilla and promptly placed it over Hill’s head.” The place went wild. Even Hill thought the joke was funny. But not Dick Fuld, who shot Madden one of his famous death stares and didn’t say another word to him for the entire evening and barely a word for the next year–when Madden, despite winning deals and establishing Lehman’s investment bank as an increasingly potent competitor on deals, was fired.
What Madden didn’t realize until after he was gone was that Fuld hated being called “The Gorilla” because the nickname didn’t just come from his legendary temper and aggressive trading style. People at the firm thought he actually looked and sounded like a gorilla, with his pitch black eyes, his forehead that protruded like a block of cement, and the way spoke: as a young trader, Fuld had been so intense that he often didn’t speak in full sentences.
douchebag.
-erin c
One knows that when eating ribs, one doesn’t need to use utensils. I have great confidence Mr. Gorilla used the refreshing moist serviette after his meal, making this neanderthal forkless reference suspect.
If Sorkin is even 10% right in “Too Big To Fail”, Fuld and his buddy Joe Gregory were two of the biggest screwups to ever sit in a corner office. One fiasco after another. It is amazing that Lehman existed at all to see the crash!
@2 I’m not just talking about ribs, I’m talking about all food all the time.
@3 you needed sorkin’s book to tell you that?
okay let’s call him princess instead.
-EC
@5 No, but it adds a lot of inside gossip to the external evidence.
shut up sorkin (@7).
-cg
@ 7, you ignorant fuk, Lehman was among the best stories on the street for the decade and a half before its collapse, not to mention the best place to work.
-former LEH equity research
That’s why I have my own business these days. Don’t have to put up with dicks like Fuld. Also, I enjoy the cooler fall afternoons and an ice cold “cerveza” with the Mexicans after we finish mowing Oscar Wyatt’s lawn in River Oaks.
~Former Enron trader
9 = the gorilla?
Hey Mikey, how’s it hangin’pal? Dat was a fun night. When you gonna give me my mask back, though? You said you only needed it for one night. Call me, immediately.
-cg
dickie is a jerkie
@9 equity research = oxymoron.
All a casino anyway.
hey dick, how’d you like me now?!
-einhorny
” The Goddamn Beatin’ That Bear Stearns (And Others) Took”……..
Funny, genius, etc!
-@9
with due respect, leh and bear were run by ignorant clowns, typical bull market geniuses – who neither had any idea of gearing in their own balancesheets nor read the tea leaves right about market liquidity and the death squeeze their balancesheets would face if things got tight.
there is a reason gs and jpm are wherew they are today and leh and bear are in the dustbin.
leadership.
@18 “incompetent political leadership.”
fify
@ 18,
Why so cunty?
E. Callan
Bring back Bo Collins!
@14 Go back to Zerohedge u schmuck
You might want to hurl at the TV everytime you see Gasparino fuel a market rumor on a deal we know won’t go down the way he says it will but as far as his written storytelling skills go – He’s a REALLY good writer. Charlie’s got a keen eye for fun detail and knows how to unpack the drama. I’m cruzing to bookstore right now to throw down 30 bucks and buy this book. I’ll be reading at night to my jr. high kids.
looks more like an Eel in that pic than a Gorilla, but those masks are harder to come by so I understand why they deferred to the latter.
@anlyst- blow me.
-DF
@18 Yeah unfortunately Bear or Lehman did not have anyone at the Treasury to keep them alive at all costs, unlike Goldman.
@26 are you delusional? you think LEH’s balance sheet had anything to do with the problem?
@27 You think Goldman would have much better odds had AIG been allowed to fail and the emergency actions by the Fed were not taken?
“threatened to smash an iron through the face of everyone shorting his company and then bite of each and everyone of their fingers one by one ”
did this actually happen?
@29 yes; he also said he was going to shove naisl through their feet.
-kevin mccallister
@29
Yes. And I said to him
“Nanner Nanner boo boo stick your head in doo doo, if you don’t I don’t care I’ll pull down your underwear.”
The gorilla did not think this was funny.
- Einhorny
@28 YOU LIE! We were well-capitalized! We had no trouble raising private capital! We were completely hedged against our AIG exposure! We could easily have withstood out AIG losses! We didn’t need TARP! We took TARP because it was the right thing to do! We benefitted from TARP but so did everyone else! We give loads to charity! AUGHHH!
@32 LOL good one
@32 Plus the taxpayers made out like bandits on the warrants! 23% annualized! Those usurious taxpaying crooks!
But does he eat with 3 fingers instead of 5? I wouldn’t be so hard on the guy, he’s only 150 years behind the curve.
http://www.askandyaboutclothes.com/Lifestyle/AHistoryofDiningUtensils.htm
“FINGERS
People have always eaten with their fingers, which may be messy, but efficient. And even before Emily Post or Miss Manners there was a correct way to use one’s fingers at mealtime. During the mid-1500s it became the custom that refined people ate ate with only the first three fingers, thus clearly distinguishing the lower class who used all five from the upper class.”
“FORKS
…
By the beginning of the 19th Century, additional tines were being added to forks in Europe, and the use of forks is starting to become popular in the United States. They are sometimes called “split spoons.”"
@34 Why not? Of course the Fed’s balance sheet had to be turned into a trash bin first.
Who really cares about the dollar now or in the future right?
@34 We have several plans in mind to claw some of that back. My personal favorite is the one where we buy children from low income families and claim them as deductions.
I’d rather have Chlamydia than Dick Fuld.
@36
Shut up Ron Paul. The Fed probably ends up making a profit on all this junk eventually too. Better than it would have done buying T-Bills in open market ops. Take your ignorant ranting back to ZeroHedge.
LEH was full of assholes who sucked up to Fuld and his key deputies, took credit for other people’s work and fired people who in any way posed a threat. The failure of LEH couldn’t have happened to a “better” group of people
Dick Fuld is a shitheel.
22/39= Steve Liesman
@39 What the hell does this have to do with the neo-confederate Ron Paul?
Yeah, sure the banking system is more sound than ever. As long as there is free money in the system at the expense of the dollar.
The Fed can profit all it wants, it depends on how much it wants to devalue the currency.
Bess- can’t you get Gasparino to tell you how much he got paid to write The Sellout? The NYP reported he got $400k as an advance last year but we’re dying to know what’s the final take home. Is it enough to finally allow CG to upgrade to a nicer weekend house in Westport?
well played…grade a writing