Prominent hedge fund manager Jim Chanos wonders what's taken so long. As he tells Bess Levin for the NY Observer:
We had concerns about Lehman well before 2008. People thought they were tough, no-nonsense guys. But we were saying, actually, they're incredibly aggressive risk takers with a wide berth for what they consider the truth. We've known for a while that the hole in their balance sheet was around $150 billion. To put that in perspective, the hole in Enron's balance sheet was roughly $65 billion. We can quibble on a billion here, a billion there, but $150 billion? I have to think that fraud was involved. It wasn't just bad business judgment.
When Levin pointed out that Lehman's then-CEO Dick Fuld has been telling people that the recent report on Lehman's bankruptcy had vindicated him, Chanos said, "I'd say that reaction is not inconsistent with the way he ran his firm."