Where are they now ? No 456 - Erin Callan

Beautiful,blonde, lissom and lovely Erin Callan, Harvard, NY Law School, who became Lehman's Finance Chief and Exec VP in December 2007 is an Alpha female and got star treatment in the WSJ May 17th 2008 "Lehman's Straight Shooter"....

"42-year-old Ms. Callan is emerging as a galvanizing force at Lehman and a finance chief who topples much of the conventional wisdom about CFOs. She also is the highest-ranking woman on Wall Street. " She also is not trained in accountancy. She has a personal shopper at New York retailer Bergdorf Goodman - Tina Sussman who trucked racks of clothes to her 31st floor apartment at 15 Central Park West - where big swinging dicks like celebrity Hedge funder Daniel Loeb stopped the traffic when he paid $45 million for his Tower side pied a terre.

Lehman had announced selling US$7 Bn commercial mortgage debts, still leaving them with US$29.2 Mn - Ms Callan says they have taken a hit since the start of fiscal 2007 of US$3.5 Bn on commercial mortgages and cutely named "held-for-sale" assets ..bankers speak .. property that won't sell at any price.

Sassy superwoman Ms. Callan was provided with a very hard row to hoe.(See video of her front the Q1 results here with a very optimistic assessment of Q2)

She did of course have a nemesis bearing down on her Mr Einhorn of Greenlight Capital who is openly shorting Lehman stock appeared on CNBC May 27th with Maria Bartiromo suggesting that the Q1 results were a trifle Transparent Lite ™ and that losses were being pushed forward.

He claimed (quite correctly as we now know) that Lehman were over leveraged .He did, as one commentator said almost " flat out call Erin Callan a liar "

``We are nowhere near'' the end of the contraction that left Lehman with about $3 billion of writedowns and losses in the past year, Einhorn said May 28th in a Bloomberg Television interview. ``Lehman is undercapitalized. They continued doubling down as the credit crisis evolved.''

As Mr. Einhorn so elegantly put it at the time Ms Callan so prettily made the disclosures : “(Lehman) just raised $6 billion of capital that they said they didn’t need to replace losses they said they didn’t have.”

Erin becomes Lehman ex CFO

On June 12th as part of a shuffle of the pack at the top of Lehman, Erin Callan became ex CFO and rejoined (albeit very briefly) their Investment Banking Division in ...er...a .. er .. senior capacity.

Erin joins Credit Suisse

Anyway after a brief sojourn at the Hamptons, on July 15th Credit Suisse Group (CS) announced that the pretty lawyer with legsup to her armpits was to start as the new head of its investment bank’s global hedge fund business.

.."Credit Suisse today announced that Erin Callan will be joining the Bank as a Managing Director and Head of its Global Hedge Fund Business. In this newly created position, Ms. Callan will join the Investment Bank Management Committee and the Global Client Steering Committee. Her appointment is effective September 2, 2008 and she will be based in New York."

Credit Suisse announce major problems - cuts

Cuts sweep through Credit Suisse. - Credit Suisse (CS) announced yesterday that they plan to cut 5,300 jobs, or 11% of its workforce, after losses of around 3B francs ($2.5B) in the first two months of this quarter (Q3). About 3,800 of the jobs will come from the investment banking unit, and the reductions will save the bank roughly 2B francs while putting a renewed emphasis on money-management for wealthy clients.

CEO Brady Dougan, who just six weeks ago said "we are the best capitalized bank in the world," said the cuts were necessary to help the bank "weather the continuing challenging market conditions." (cf John Fuld CEO Lehman Bros. March 17th 2008 ``Our liquidity position has been and continues to be very strong,'' )

The bank said its deposit base and funding remain 'very solid.' Dougan and senior executives Walter Kielholz and Paul Calello have agreed to forgo their 2008 bonuses. Shares -4.1% in Zurich, bringing the stock's losses this year to 61%.

Credit Suisse said earlier this week it will eliminate 650 employees in London which comes on top of 400 job cuts at its London offices earlier in the year. Daily Telegraph 4th Dec - Credit Suisse finally wakes up to the new world

Today’s announcement brings the total number of job cuts at Credit Suisse to 7,390, compared with 9,000 at UBS. UBS in October agreed to a $59.2 billion aid package from the Swiss government and the central bank to relieve it of risky assets, while Credit Suisse declined assistance.

Watch this space....