kevin  interviewer: You were at Lehman in the final days. With hindsight, what went wrong?

Felix G Rohatyn: You know, you may find this hard to believe but I haven't a clue. I was at Lehman as an adviser, mostly to advise them on their European things, for about a year, a year and a half and I had very little contact. It was a very large place, but essentially there were five or six people who ran it, but things were getting tighter, things were getting more tense . . . But what it was I only found out once it was over, and it was dramatic. And I felt very, very sorry for them, for Dick Fuld, for the 24,000 people in this business. Could they have done things differently? Of course, one can always do things differently... I don't know. Was there a confidence in the back of people's minds that they wouldn't be allowed to fail? Certainly, in the back of some people's minds there was the notion that this wouldn't be allowed to happen.

kevin  "I certainly wasn't looking for a job," says Rohatyn. "On the other hand, I am a big fan of Dick Fuld's, and having a home was a rather attractive proposition."