John Lanchester writes:

The Murder of Lehman Brothers is a pseudonymous version of events by ‘Joseph Tibman’, an investment banker, who sees the bank as a ‘negligent homicide’, in which thousands of honest employees were betrayed by the actions and mistakes of a few people at the top. Tibman still works in finance – hence the pseudonym, he says, though I’m not absolutely sure that follows. His book is calm and sad and it has a strong sense of Lehman’s history, including what Tibman sees as Fuld’s finest hour, the aftermath of 9/11, which the bank’s employees lived through in its headquarters at 3 World Financial Center, slap beside the World Trade Center. This doesn’t mean he lets Fuld off for his many mistakes, and Tibman is good on the way Fuld’s embattled, paranoid worldview had seeped into the mentality of the bank, and helped prevent people realising just how deep a hole they were in.

(LRB 5 November 2009)

Brick Tower | paperback 243 pp. |ISBN: 9781883283711