When one is running a multi-billion dollar firm, it’s important to have an unwavering, obsessive attention to detail. While Dick Fuld’s focus on Lehman Brothers’ balance sheet admittedly fell by the wayside, there was one thing the Gorilla never stopped harping on: an insistence his top lieutenants had perfect marriages. According to a new book by Vicki Ward, Lehman management tied the success of the bank to how strong its marital partnerships were, with Chris Pettit, a former Fuld deputy, giving a toast at a dinner for the senior executives one night and noting, “Now, look at this! Every single person here is with their original spouse. That is why we are successful. Because our word is our honor. We succeed in business because people can trust us.” It was after this bold proclamation, the logic of which allows us to safely assume that circa September 2008, the majority of LEH brass was on its third and fourth wives and spending the majority of its days locked in Dick Fuld’s office blowing lines out of crack-whore’s ass, that Pettit was pushed out of the firm. Not for fucking up business-wise, of course, but because he cheated on his wife and was subsequently “deserted” by his closest allies because that is something Lehman Brothers don’t do. Determined, for some reason, possibly Asperser’s, that something so horrible could never happen to Team Lehman again, Dick Fuld apparently became even more obsessed with keeping “a watchful eye on his executives’ marriages.” He “openly” hemmed and hawed about chief minion Scott Freidheim being single (which would explain this look of joy when Scotty-boy finally tied the knot at age 43) and became visibly distressed at the “signs of marital discord.”

During the annual Lehman summer retreats at the Fulds’ ranch, in Sun Valley, Idaho, it wasn’t uncommon for him to pull one of his employees aside and ask him questions about his home life. “Are you all having trouble?” he asked Bradley Jack, head of banking and later co–chief operating officer (C.O.O.), after overhearing an argument between Jack and his wife, Karin. “He really wanted to know,” recalls Karin, an attractive blonde, who once ran recruiting on the sales desk at Lehman and married the good-looking, athletic Jack in 1991. “He didn’t think Brad and I looked happy enough. It really worried him.”

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