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Authors: Vicky Ward
Tags: Non-Fiction, Business
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from the troops below him.
Initially both Fuld and Pettit kept glass offices on the ninth floor (the trading floor), but Pettit was the manager who knew your name if you worked on the floor. Fuld did not.
If you had a problem, you went to Pettit. If you ‘d messed up, you went to Pettit.
Pettit understood why Fuld did what he did—and, according to Moncreiffe, was grateful that Fuld was the one who had to negotiate with the tough guys upstairs.
Contrary to some people’s beliefs, the two men actually worked quite well together at this point. “Chris was far more interested in running the business than in battling upstairs,” says Bob Shapiro.
On the corporate videos that got made in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Pettit’s preeminence at LCPI is easily deduced from the simple fact that Fuld scarcely appears on them at all.
In “Citizen Genirs,” the video tribute to Bob Genirs, the chief administrative officer, the entire firm comically searches for Genirs ‘s Rosebud (which turns out to be a calculator called Victor). It’s Pettit who appears as the boss.
“Dick was on the sidelines at this time,” says Moncreiffe. “He wasn’t the main guy urging people to do the right thing and stick together. Chris did.”
Jim Vinci, Pettit’s chief of staff, says Pettit convinced everyone that “they were part of something really special. And people believed him.”
They were right to. According to Moncreiffe and others, they made way more money than their Shearson counterparts.
And Jim Robinson noticed.
As a result, by 1990 LCPI was running all of fixed income for Shearson Lehman. The Lehman traders had taken over the house. And the man pulling the strings was Chris Pettit.
“He took such pride in LCPI ,” says Mary Anne. “To him they were family; it felt like he was coaching a team; everyone had a part. They were going to be different, stand apart from the other Wall Street players.”
“He was a Marine; they were all a bunch of Marines,” says Peter Cohen, the CEO of Shearson, now the chairman and CEO of the securities firm, Cowen Group. Cohen admits he loathed Pettit. “I can guarantee you that if you asked anyone in investment banking if they liked Chris Pettit the answer would have been no. . . . He always wanted more money, more independence for LCPI . They may have worshipped him—but it was like a cult thing. They were soldiers and he was their captain.”
Moncreiffe says, “Of course Cohen and Pettit didn’t get on. Cohen understood Fuld’s motivation but couldn’t deal with Chris’s altruism.”
Shearson had bought Lehman, and yet it was Lehman that seemed to be incubating its power.
“The truth is, Chris understood that unless we retained independence we would lose control of our business, our revenues, our accounting. We’d disappear,” says Vinci. “By hanging on to those, we eventually submerged Shearson into
our
culture.”
Steve Carlson, then in the mortgage business, said that within LCPI the troops took to snickering that the Shearson takeover ought better to be known as the “take-under,” for it was clear almost from the start that there was no quit in Lehman Brothers.
Chapter 5
Slamex
On our corporate videos we had music from
Les Miserables
. In
Chris’s mind we were fighting tyranny—just like the French
Revolution.”
—Ronald Gallatin, Lehman’s “minister without portfolio” and chief bonus negotiator
T he fight led by Chris Pettit and Perry Moncreiffe might have been over, but the war in the offices of the newly fashioned Shearson Lehman Brothers was just beginning. It was inevitable, really—here was the shotgun marriage of two of Wall Street’s most culturally diverse houses, a combined firm that, as Helyar and Burroughs note in
Barbarians at the Gate
, “came to be marked by a peculiar blend of elegance and streetwise chutzpah: brass knuckles in a velvet glove.”
Shearson was a vast brokerage of 8,000 salespeople who made money purely on
Initially both Fuld and Pettit kept glass offices on the ninth floor (the trading floor), but Pettit was the manager who knew your name if you worked on the floor. Fuld did not.
If you had a problem, you went to Pettit. If you ‘d messed up, you went to Pettit.
Pettit understood why Fuld did what he did—and, according to Moncreiffe, was grateful that Fuld was the one who had to negotiate with the tough guys upstairs.
Contrary to some people’s beliefs, the two men actually worked quite well together at this point. “Chris was far more interested in running the business than in battling upstairs,” says Bob Shapiro.
On the corporate videos that got made in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Pettit’s preeminence at LCPI is easily deduced from the simple fact that Fuld scarcely appears on them at all.
In “Citizen Genirs,” the video tribute to Bob Genirs, the chief administrative officer, the entire firm comically searches for Genirs ‘s Rosebud (which turns out to be a calculator called Victor). It’s Pettit who appears as the boss.
“Dick was on the sidelines at this time,” says Moncreiffe. “He wasn’t the main guy urging people to do the right thing and stick together. Chris did.”
Jim Vinci, Pettit’s chief of staff, says Pettit convinced everyone that “they were part of something really special. And people believed him.”
They were right to. According to Moncreiffe and others, they made way more money than their Shearson counterparts.
And Jim Robinson noticed.
As a result, by 1990 LCPI was running all of fixed income for Shearson Lehman. The Lehman traders had taken over the house. And the man pulling the strings was Chris Pettit.
“He took such pride in LCPI ,” says Mary Anne. “To him they were family; it felt like he was coaching a team; everyone had a part. They were going to be different, stand apart from the other Wall Street players.”
“He was a Marine; they were all a bunch of Marines,” says Peter Cohen, the CEO of Shearson, now the chairman and CEO of the securities firm, Cowen Group. Cohen admits he loathed Pettit. “I can guarantee you that if you asked anyone in investment banking if they liked Chris Pettit the answer would have been no. . . . He always wanted more money, more independence for LCPI . They may have worshipped him—but it was like a cult thing. They were soldiers and he was their captain.”
Moncreiffe says, “Of course Cohen and Pettit didn’t get on. Cohen understood Fuld’s motivation but couldn’t deal with Chris’s altruism.”
Shearson had bought Lehman, and yet it was Lehman that seemed to be incubating its power.
“The truth is, Chris understood that unless we retained independence we would lose control of our business, our revenues, our accounting. We’d disappear,” says Vinci. “By hanging on to those, we eventually submerged Shearson into
our
culture.”
Steve Carlson, then in the mortgage business, said that within LCPI the troops took to snickering that the Shearson takeover ought better to be known as the “take-under,” for it was clear almost from the start that there was no quit in Lehman Brothers.
Chapter 5
Slamex
On our corporate videos we had music from
Les Miserables
. In
Chris’s mind we were fighting tyranny—just like the French
Revolution.”
—Ronald Gallatin, Lehman’s “minister without portfolio” and chief bonus negotiator
T he fight led by Chris Pettit and Perry Moncreiffe might have been over, but the war in the offices of the newly fashioned Shearson Lehman Brothers was just beginning. It was inevitable, really—here was the shotgun marriage of two of Wall Street’s most culturally diverse houses, a combined firm that, as Helyar and Burroughs note in
Barbarians at the Gate
, “came to be marked by a peculiar blend of elegance and streetwise chutzpah: brass knuckles in a velvet glove.”
Shearson was a vast brokerage of 8,000 salespeople who made money purely on
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