Former Lehman Executive Calls for Ouster of High School Teacher

Posted Feb 1st 2010 10:50AM by Zac Bissonnette
Filed under: Management, Blogs

The following story is overflowing with irony. The reason is partly because of one man's lack of irony: Hugh "Skip" McGee, the former head of investment banking at Lehman Brothers, sent a five-page screed to the board of trustees at his son's private Texas high school after a teacher referred to bankers as "sleazeballs". DealBreaker has published the letter in its entirety. If you have a lot of time on your hands, read and look for Skip's complaints about the lack of cross-dressing at the pep rally, among other things.

His demands? The teacher, the upper school principal, and the headmaster should all resign over the injustice. That's right: a former executive at Lehman Bros. is demanding accountability.

A year ago, William Cohan reported on McGee's lucrative deal that he signed to join Barclays as head of investment banking -- right after he negotiated the fire sale of Lehman's operation to that bank. In his letter, McGee writes:

Last year, she commented to an 11th grade history class including my son that somehow both Lehman and Barclays made a bunch of money on the Lehman bankruptcy, and that all investment bankers were "sleazeballs" and dishonest. With tears in his eyes, John Ed called her out in front of the class and said his dad worked for Lehman Brothers and had been working around the clock trying to save 11,000 jobs and that she had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.

Right: He worked around the clock trying to save 11,000 jobs, and then departed for Barclays with a two-year, $50 million contract, while shareholders, many former employees, and creditors suffered tremendous losses.

There's nothing really wrong with being self-righteous and melodramatic, but it helps when it's not rife with hypocrisy.

Tags: Hugh McGee, HughMcgee, lehman brothers, LehmanBrothers

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

2-01-2010 @ 1:15PM

al coholic said...

If the shoe fits, wear it, sleazeball...

2-01-2010 @ 1:28PM

des946 said...

Well, sleazebags are sleaze bags; and they have the audacity to do or claim anything.

this guy certainly isn't the type who can see the irony in all of this. The blatant FRAUD, misfeasance, malfeasance, and irresponsibility at Lehamn was just "business", what we are talking about here is something "personal" that the man thinks is really important. People losiing their life savings is just "business" to him. I'm sure that he never saw any problem with taking his bonuses after all of the investors had been "defrauded", did he? There seems to be very few of these corporate guys who appear to have much of a conscience or sense of morality.