No Room at Headquarters As Barclays Takes Helm; Who Gets His Old Digs?Napoleon cooled his heels on Elba. The Dalai Lama lives in Dharamsala, India. And Lehman Brothers Holdings Chairman and CEO Richard Fuld Jr. will be banished to 1271 Sixth Ave.
The building at 1271 Sixth Ave. holds some Lehman employees for whom there is no space in the main midtown Manhattan headquarters at 745 Seventh Ave. That included many of the administrative and back-office jobs as well as the corporate-communications team.
Now 745 Seventh Ave., festooned in cerulean blue, is the center of operations for the investment bank of Barclays, and there is no room in the new order for Mr. Fuld.
The move means Mr. Fuld will no longer hold the corner office at Lehman. On Monday, he and other senior Lehman executives who weren't offered jobs by Barclays are officially leaving the 31st floor of Lehman's headquarters and moving to the 45th floor of 1271.
While there, Mr. Fuld and some of his executive compatriots will go about their business of wrapping up what is left of Lehman. There isn't much left now, with the sale of Lehman's Americas business to Barclays, the European and Asian businesses in the hands of Nomura Holdings, and investment management in the fold of private-equity firms Bain Capital and Hellman & Friedman. But Lehman Brothers still is involved in the bankruptcy process, and Mr. Fuld and his cabinet are the cleanup crew.
The big question: Will Barclays President Robert E. Diamond Jr. get Mr. Fuld's old corner office?
By: Heidi Moore
Wall Street Journal; October 2, 2008
