Lehman Brothers

Lehman Brothers, founded in 1850 by the Lehman brothers—Henry, Emanuel and Mayer—was once Wall Street’s preeminent juggernaut, known for turning high finance into an art form of risk and reward. The firm was a star player in the world of investment banking until it took a spectacular nosedive into financial oblivion in 2008. The company’s ignominious bankruptcy, the largest in U.S. history, was like the stock market’s version of “The Great Gatsby” unraveling at a party—full of promise and decadence, ending in catastrophic disarray. Lehman’s collapse didn’t just signal the onset of the Great Recession; it was a revelation of how deep the rot went in the financial system. Valued in the billions before the crash, Lehman’s worth plummeted to zero faster than you can say “subprime mortgage crisis.” The firm's high-profile executives—Richard Fuld, the man who presided over the debacle, and his cronies—became symbols of financial excess and mismanagement. The firm’s fall was both a cautionary tale and a dramatic episode in the annals of corporate hubris, embodying the volatile dance between risk and reward.