18th
The April Vanity Fair has a pretty horrifying article on what was demanded of the wives of Lehman Brothers executives.
Lehman’s Desperate Housewives:
That was just what was expected of all the wives. “I knew the culture,” she says, “so I knew he couldn’t come home if there was an important meeting. I was in labor with our daughter and had to lie there without him—but I wouldn’t get mad at him—he had called the entire Hong Kong office in for a meeting. We knew that it would have been used against him. If you made a personal choice that hurt Lehman, it was over for you.”
Brad Jack concurred with everything his wife said. “I remember when the Hong Kong office flew in and Karin went into labor,” he says. “I got into the car to try to get to the hospital but only made it three miles because the traffic was snarled up. I had to call her up and turn the car around and go back and deal with the guys who’d flown in to see me. She was so understanding about it. But she’s right—I couldn’t not be in the meeting.”
Karin and Brad remember when one of their children had a seizure brought on by a high fever. That day they were scheduled to look at the new house Joe Gregory, then the co-C.O.O. with Jack, was building on Long Island. “It was just the six of us—Dick, Joe, Brad, and the wives,” says Karin. “We were using Joe’s helicopter. But I said, ‘I have to take my son to the pediatrician.’ So they landed the Sikorsky near our home and waited for me, and they were not leaving without me. Can you imagine the pressure? I have this really sick child, but I know that if I don’t get on that helicopter it’s going to hurt Brad.” Brad agrees that it would have hurt him had Karin not gotten into the helicopter.
