Who was the CEO of Lehman Brothers when it filed for bankruptcy in 2008?

Richard Fuld was the CEO of Lehman Brothers when it filed for bankruptcy in 2008.

Richard Severin Fuld Jr. led Lehman Brothers from 1994 until the firm’s collapse on September 15, 2008. He became chairman and chief executive after Lehman was spun off from American Express, and he oversaw its transformation into a major global investment bank with a large bond-trading and mortgage-finance business.

Lehman filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after investors and counterparties lost confidence in the firm’s heavily leveraged balance sheet and exposure to declining real-estate assets. Its filing became one of the defining moments of the global financial crisis and the largest U.S. corporate bankruptcy at the time.

A common mix-up is confusing Fuld with executives at other crisis-era institutions. Jamie Dimon led JPMorgan Chase, Lloyd Blankfein led Goldman Sachs, and John Thain was Merrill Lynch’s chief executive during the period. Fuld remained Lehman’s chief executive at the moment of the filing, although Bryan Marsal later became CEO during the bankruptcy process.