12th Sept 08,Friday: It had been in the news for sometime now. Talks were on with KDB and BOA. During the weekly team lunch at "the Village", Jersey City , it was a common consensus that Lehman needed Fed's money for survival. Everybody but me was pretty sure that we would get the money from fed. I had a nagging doubt. How many companies can the FED save? Most importantly, why should the taxpayers pay for this mess. The corporates don't give bonuses to the general public when they reap huge profits - why should the taxpayers bail out these corporates? But as Yong pointed out, it was in the nations interest. Lehman's failure would cause a ripple effect and take down many others with it, so it was in teh nation's interest that the govt will save lehman. We had spent weeks wishing and praying for some miracle and hoped that monday will bring some news
14th Sept 08,Sunday: I received a call from my lehman manager asking me to report to work early and confirmed the news that Lehman is filinf for bankruptsy tonight. I didn't know what to think. Lehman was a giant. I was so proud of the company. I loved teh wrok culture, I loved everything about it.
15th Sept 08, Monday: I reached office at 7:00 pm to find ell the employees packing their stuff. I was shocked, I asked "Why are you packing". Everyone was like : "Get your stuff out, we don't know if we will work tomorrow". The entire morning was spent talking to everyone. Everyone was so sad. It was surreal. I didn't belive this was it. We spent the entire mornign going over ft.com and online.wsj.com. Heard everyones interpretations.Eventually we were called for a group meeting. Our SVP thanked each of us and said how proud he was of each one of us. The usual morale boosting things. Tips were give on outplacement services, resume building and networking to find more jobs. Most joked about it. One guy actually offered his car to transport our stuff from office and amazingly, even offered to store our stuff in his apartment for one week. He ,very quitely, also put out an ad saying he was looking for a roommate :). The common consensus was that for a while its good to get out of financial services and education was topped the list. After hanging out for some more time, we were called into the meeting with TCS managers. Nothing as usual was said. Hang tight and continue to come for work (unless you are kicked out).
16th Sept 08, Tuesday: All the employees working from home. We have started working on production issues. There is a rumour going on that the cafe downstairs is closing. So everyone is rushing to buy stuff with the remaining balance from thier cards.At around 3:00 pm we hear that our division is being bought by Barclay's. The UK national anthem is being played on the trading floor. Evrybody is waiting with a baited breadth. At 5:00 pm we hear that all US IT employees are part of the acquisition. It was a relief.
17th Sept 08, Wednesday: Barclay's announced that it will take 10K out of the 13K employees in NA. Some were seen calculating how many in NY just to see thier chances.
18th Sept 08, Thursday: We have started working as usual as Barclays Capitals.
It was a very surreal expirience to be in this situation. I knew I would not be affected, I was a consultant so I woul dbe placed in another company. So I was watching the entire episode with an interest. I felt bad, definelty. Like I said before, I was very proud to be working for Lehman. It was not the largest of the IB firms. But it had a very good brand name. I had seen the work culture and I absolutely loved it. They would do anythign for you- as an employee. They made you work hard , but also took really good care of you. The most difference between my previous company and this is the people. I have always believed that people make a company. Whatever brand name /work you do - at the end of the day its the people who create/exceute those startegies. If a person at any level is a flab, the entire tree below that person will suffer. So it is very important for every level to be very strong. My previous project in this cpmpany had a manager who I believe is a flab. But the current manager is as good a manager can be. He takes care of us, treats us like human beings - and it broke my heart to see them so worried. Their entire life savings had just puffed in front of them and they could do nothing. Employees ,righly so, were very bitter. Everyone had expected the govt to bail Lehman out. If they could do it for Bear, then why not Lehman. Bear was very small as compared to Lehman. But the govt had failed lehman. Noone could get over this fact.
I agree that the govt did the right thing. During the Bear episode, no one was ready for this. It was unexpected so teh govt had come forward and had given them a lifeline. Lehman had had time to prepare for this. Its been 6 months now. The top guys had seen the balancesheets and they knew it was coming. But they did not react quickly. In the last month, they kept pursuing KDB and rejected good offers from other companies. Its said that Fuld, made teh same mistake that all long serving CEO's make : felt that his company was worth much more than its market price. It was a terrible mistake. A chance lost that could have corrected so many things. Fuld lost his post, but his shortsightedness caused so much uproar. So much money, so many jobs were lost. On top of it all, faith was lost.
Some news articles:
http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage.ft?news_id=fto091520081657170568&page=2
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article4761890.ece
