Life as the wife of a Lehman Brothers banker

[ukhudshanskiy]

There was an annual summer jaunt to the Fuld’s ranch in Sun Valley, Idaho. Not for this lot relaxing walks and jovial team bonding; the weekend was planned with military precision. Ward writes that the men were expected to wear “khaki pants and either a golf shirt or button-down”; Fuld believed that sloppy dress equalled sloppy thinking. The women had to pack “pretty dresses, jewellery, and Manolo Blahnik shoes” as well as hiking gear for the day. This annual hike was so gruelling that one wife turned up with a fake plaster cast in an attempt to get out of it. To her horror, another wife had turned up with a real cast on, but still planned to do the hike. “The wives were just as competitive as their husbands,” says Ward. “If anything, they were more political.”

Niki Gregory, the wife of Lehman president Joe Gregory, had a personal staff of around 30 and a room full of shoes “twice the size of the Jimmy Choo store in New York.” Ward writes that there were Christian Louboutins, Manolo Blahniks and Chanel shoes, and that most of them had never been worn.