Ex-Lehman Employees Cashing In From ‘Recovery’ That Left Most Workers Behind

Five years after the fourth-largest U.S. investment bank collapsed, sparking a panic that many believed would bring down the world financial system, many of the executives who tried to paper over the bank’s mounting losses are reaping the benefits of the Wall Street comeback. The Huffington Post charted the career paths of 63 former Lehman Brothers employees named in an independent bankruptcy examiner’s report as having knowledge of an accounting maneuver that allowed Lehman to disguise the true extent of its deteriorating finances, likely postponing the reckoning. A stunning 47 of these bankers still hold senior positions in the financial services industry, including Michael McGarvey, an executive and senior member of Lehman’s finance group who described the accounting move in internal emails as “basically window-dressing” based on “legal technicalities.” Within Lehman, the this group was responsible for most aggressively pushing the dodgy accounting move, known as Repo 105, according to emails published with the 2,200-page examiner’s report. More in the Huffington Post here.