Did accounting rules do for Lehman?
Dick Fuld may be widely seen as an ogre guilty of hubris and ineptitude, but some people are coming out on his side.
The argument in favour of Fuld goes a little like this....There was no need for a company generating an operating profit of $600m a quarter to go under simply because it had a $6.4bn non-cash charge to revenues - particularly when that non-cash charge related to potentially spurious mark-to-market valuations of currently illiquid products.
According to Fuld's few remaining fans, Dick had simply bet on the housing market. That call was wrong - in the short term. Longer term, all could have come good, if only mark-to-market rules hadn't intervened.
Give Dick a break below...