Looking Back at Lehman's Collapse With the Woman Who Fell Farthest
What Erin Callan Did After Lehman Collapse
As the financial system was teetering and about to collapse, Erin Callan had a prescient exchange with one of her colleagues at Lehman Brothers. It was Nov. 29, 2007, and news that the co-president of Morgan Stanley, Zoe Cruz, had just been fired after her firm took a $3.7 billion loss on subprime mortgage securities was flashing across TV screens all over Lehman's trading floor. Joe Gregory, the chief operating officer of Lehman, popped into Callan's office. "Did you see the Morgan Stanley news?” Gregory asked. “The news about Zoe?” Callan, who was about to take over as Lehman's chief financial officer, was distressed. Cruz was one of the highest-ranking women on Wall Street. Without her, Callan would be left standing nearly alone as a female atop a male-dominated industry, like a weather vane attached to a roof that may or may not have been sound. The parallels with Cruz's situation were obvious.
"Zoe’s destiny was my possible destiny," Callan writes in a new memoir published Monday. "Her story was similar to my story in a big picture way."