Lehman Brothers and its Chairman and CEO, Dick Fuld, are the focus of an article entitled The Survivor written by Jenny Anderson in the Sunday October 28th 2007 edition of The New York Times. Toomre Capital Markets LLC ("TCM") got its professional start on the fixed-income trading floors of Lehman Brothers where first Lew Glucksman, and then Dick Fuld, Joe Gregory and Christopher Pettit roamed among the traders and sales personnel. The sale of Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb to Shearson American Express in 1984 led to the integration of the Lehman Brothers' scrappy fixed-income trading personnel with the more relaxed fixed-income specialists from Shearson. To put it politely, there was a revolt at the thought of the Lehman Brothers traders reporting into Shearson American Express fixed-income management, and hence for several years, the Shearson Lehman Brothers fixed-income division was in essence divided into two parts. An entity run by Dick Fuld called Lehman Commercial Paper Inc. ("LCPI") controlled the repo desk portion of central funding, the entire and very significant commercial paper operations, the government bond trading and sales operation and the relatively small group that was called the mortgage department. The rest of fixed-income reported into management from the former Shearson entity.

The mantra of the old Lehman Commercial Paper Inc. ("LCPI") division was "Every day is a battle: think about the firm, do the right thing, protect your client, protect the firm, be a good team member and most importantly, Be in the Game, BE IN IT." Lars Toomre is smiling this morning as he reads very much those same thoughts being shared some twenty plus years later. The old LCPI culture was incredibly strong and now apparently permeates much of the other segments of the firm, both in the New York City headquarters and in the branch offices around the world. Congratulations to Dick Fuld, Joe Gregory (Lars' former direct boss and now Lehman's President) and the rest of the Lehman Brothers management team on transforming a very successful bond operation into a truly global firm.

This New York Times article includes significant information that explains why Lehman Brothers escaped relatively unscathed from this summer's credit crunch. Lehman Brothers truly has strong risk management and survived this round of stress so that it can play in the game of fixed-income another day. Whereas many associated with Merrill Lynch, the old Salomon Brothers division within Citigroup, and Bear Stearns are questioning just how badly are their firms wounded, will there be jobs there for them in the future, and if so, just what type of risk appetite will there be in those future days?

At present, it appears that the true kings of the fixed-income world are Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs. The interesting challenge will be if they remain in the game as the mortgage market meltdown continues to evolve and the challenges of globalization

, electronic trading, increased compliance, and illiquidity put further stresses on the global fixed-income (and FICC) divisions.

Lars Toomre and Aldon Hynes are proud to have gotten the start of their professional financial careers on the fixed-income floors of Lehman Brothers. Thanks to the adroit positioning by Ronald ("Jesse") Juster ahead of the 1985 move to American Express Tower, the first row of LCPI trading desks abutting the Shearson side of the trading floor were assigned to the CMO and Asset-Backed Securities trading area. As head of that trading area through the late 1980's, Lars Toomre witnessed firsthand some the internal strife that resulted from being part of one division that primarily distributed its product through the sales personnel controlled and motivated by another division. Following Dick Fuld's urging, the CMO Desk was very much "in it" each and every day. Partly as a result, there often was a buzz of heightened activity around the CMO Desk and significant profits ensued for all "four fingers" -- for the individual, for the team (the CMO Trading group), for the division (LCPI) and for the firm (Shearson Lehman Brothers).

In the coming days as they consider the "adequacy" of their forthcoming bonus amounts, many on Wall Street will do well to reflect on how well all four fingers have done this year. Many would do well to reflect on whether what they do professionally is really worth more than what a school teacher, a police officer or firefighter do that results in a median United States 2006 income of $48,201. True, the major metropolitan centers housing the major financial districts are expensive and should result in some increase above the average to be comparable. However, are what is performed in these financial jobs really worth multiples of the United States median income, especially in an environment of literally billions of dollars of losses?

Today, Toomre Capital Markets LLC ("TCM") is a trusted advisor to leading investment banks, asset managers, hedge funds and service providers on complex and real-time Capital Markets issues, almost always with some amount of "hair" around them. Recent engagements have varied widely and have focused on such areas as Enterprise Risk Management

, CDOs/structured finance issues, complex financial engineering models, securitization, reinsurance and Sarbanes-Oxley matters. TCM also is a financial engineering consultant for technology firms (such as AMD, Microsoft, Strategic Directives, and Streambase Systems) and systems integrators (such as G2 Systems and Incremax) where the TCM focus is delivering high-value, scalable custom business solutions to hedge fund and other capital markets clients. Please feel free to contact TCM at the contact information below should the reader need any assistance or have any questions. Reader comments and thoughts are most welcome.