With the addition of big Wall Street hedge funds, JPMorgan Chase, Citibank.

Soon, institutions in the market continued to join the battle of "naked short selling" of Lehman Brothers shares.

At the same time, some unknown third-rate tabloids and media are also spreading all kinds of unverifiable "breaking news, expert stock reviews, etc." in the market.

It's almost all negative news about Lehman Brothers.

The main purpose of this behavior is to completely defeat Lehman Brothers, so that it has no hope of "turning over".

Fulder, who was holding an emergency meeting, and the members of Lehman's board of directors were also the first to receive this heavy news.

In the face of Goldman Sachs' shameless act of taking the lead in short-selling, the board of directors now has nothing to do but scold a few words.

Because of the grudge between them and Goldman Sachs, it has not been a day or two for a long time.

In 1996, Paulson was appointed president and chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs.

At that time, he advocated heavy betting on Internet companies that were booming, obtained a lot of investment income, and led Goldman Sachs Group to become the second largest investment bank on Wall Street in one fell swoop. (The first is Merrill Lynch)

Later, the dot-com bubble burst in the United States, and Goldman Sachs entered multiple crises.

In 1999, Paulson became Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs.

At this time, although Goldman Sachs was "seriously injured", it was not yet "life-threatening", so it was not difficult for Paulson to clean up the mess.

But at this time, Lehman Brothers saw the hope of killing Goldman Sachs and changing from the fourth to the third, and also saw a good opportunity to make a windfall.

So, it urgently mobilized a huge amount of money and began to short Goldman Sachs, and at the same time sent people to lobby the Federal Reserve to not save Goldman Sachs.

In the indiscriminate bombardment of Lehman, Goldman Sachs' fate hung by a thread.

Fortunately, Paulson also has several heavyweight friends in the circle, such as Aikman, the owner of a large hedge fund, and Jamie Dimon, president of JPMorgan Chase, who are willing to contribute to help Goldman Sachs recover.

But how could Lehman, who was red-eyed, give up, it directly chose to short all the funders who helped Goldman Sachs.

After this battle, Lehman became the world's third-largest investment bank, and Goldman Sachs fell to fourth.

However, after 2000, Paulson's outstanding performance in mergers and acquisitions made Goldman Sachs the first brother of Wall Street investment banking in just over a year.

Nowadays feng shui takes turns.

Lehman Brothers was in crisis, Paulson became U.S. Treasury secretary, and Jamie Dimon became a director of the Federal Reserve's most powerful New York branch.

So it's no wonder why so many institutions want to take advantage of Lehman to rob and fall into the ground.

"Fulder, we must now find a way to save investor confidence, or we will soon become the second Bear Stearns company."

A Lehman director, who is nearly 80 years old, said worriedly.

By the time they met, Lehman's stock price had taken three big dives, from a high of $60 per share to less than $8 now.

The market capitalization is only $6 billion left.

It plummeted by ninety percent.

If the stock price cannot be stabilized, more and more investors will redeem their funds, which will eventually lead to the breakage of Lehman's capital chain and the inability to operate normally.

To be honest, he has been retired for more than 20 years and has long since ceased to participate in the day-to-day operation of the company, but now at this critical juncture, he has to step up.

Otherwise, the Lehman moment will soon come.

"Sanders, how many mortgage-related securities do we have left?" Fuld took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down.

Although the outside world is now full of unfavorable news for Lehman, as the CEO, he must not mess up at this time, otherwise Lehman will really have no hope.

"BOSS, after Bear Stearns declared bankruptcy, we immediately began to liquidate the subordinated bonds on the company's books as quickly as possible, but due to the sharp increase in the default rate of subprime mortgages, the credit rating and market value of the subordinated debt plummeted, and we still have about $50 billion of subordinated debt on hand that have not had time to sell."

Sanders, the general manager, reported a set of data.

Hiss~

The company executives in the conference room couldn't help but shiver.

The elderly board members had even more shocked expressions on their faces.

They never imagined that Lehman's current leverage had reached such a high level!

As industry insiders, they know very well that the asset composition of investment banks cannot only be subordinated debt, if you count commercial debt, counterparty debt, central bank borrowings, asset-backed securities and so on.

A series of liquidations down.

Doesn't that mean that Lehman's current debt is likely to be as high as hundreds of billions of dollars?

"The real situation may be even worse than this, the value of the subordinated debt we hold has plummeted, and even if we end up selling it completely, I am afraid that we will only be able to recover a tenth of it"

Sanders covered his face with a pained expression and didn't say any more.

The subtext of his sentence is that I can't find a buyer anymore, and this turnip is already rotten in my hands.

In the face of such a huge mess, the board once again pointed the finger at CEO Fulder.

"Ladies and gentlemen, in fact, we don't need to be so pessimistic, after the bankruptcy of Bear Stearns, the Federal Reserve said more than once that it would open the discount window to provide short-term liquidity business for commercial banks, what does it mean?"

"It means that the government doesn't want to see us fall, otherwise our subordinated debt will have a huge impact on the housing market."

"So, I believe that the government will definitely step in to stabilize the market, and even inject a lot of money directly into us, and at that time, our current situation will also be reversed."

"On the other hand, we can't be idle, we still have a lot of assets to sell, which can give us higher liquidity and allow us to ride out this crisis more smoothly."

Fulder, who was 62 years old at the time, was still so confident that he only used a few words to calm everyone's emotions.

After graduating from college at the age of 22, he joined Lehman Brothers and went from trader to CEO, the longest-serving CEO of a major Wall Street investment bank.

Not only experienced the independent listing of Lehman in 1994, but also led the company through the cash flow crisis in 1998 and the Internet bubble in 2000.

He was the creator of Lehman's brilliance, and it was his pride that created Lehman's many rebirths.

Therefore, the board of directors has no choice but to pray that this time it will be as good as ever.

Otherwise, they have only one way to go bankrupt.

After the meeting, Fuld faced an interview with reporters and confidently announced that the worst of the subprime mortgage crisis had passed.

Moreover, he also said that he is willing to gamble with investors to see whether the Fed can stabilize the market at the end.

He is convinced that the Fed will win in the end.

However, what he didn't know was that in fact, the Fed at this time was just bluffing.

They are not ready for large-scale discounting, and they have deliberately said so in order to gain market confidence.

However, Fulder's performance still played a role, Lehman pulled back from a 57% plunge and closed down 14%, giving him some respite.

But it's just a respite.

Next, Lehman searched for buyers all over the world, and it was only then that they really experienced what it means to be "bad luck". (End of chapter)