Lehman directors share $4.5m

Directors of Lehman Brothers, headed by Richard Fuld, chairman and chief executive, shared a bumper payout of $4.5m (€3.4m) last year from the firm's private equity funds, on top of their compensation packages.

Fuld topped the list, published as part of the notice to shareholders of Lehman's forthcoming annual general meeting on April 5, receiving almost $1.2m from four Lehman funds: Capital Partners III and IV, Real Estate Capital and the Diversified Private Equity Fund.

The list provides a rare public insight into the actual amounts paid out to investors in private equity funds.

The returns include the original capital investment as well as the profit, so it is impossible to determine the actual level of profits from the funds.

However, the notice did separate the money paid out to the investors from the capital they still have invested in Lehman Capital Partners IV. Fuld received $254,381 from the fund and still has almost $1m invested in it.

Fuld actually received more than $2m, but $2,054,945 was used to repay financing, and the interest it accrued, provided by the bank.

Fuld was instrumental in Lehman Brothers' return to private equity fund management at the end of 2003, bringing in Charles Ayres and buying Crossroads, a US buy-out group. The merchant banking group, which was set up in 1989 and invests proprietary as well as third-party capital, has a total of $3.5bn in private equity assets under management.