Can Lehman Brothers’ Directors Help Firm to Avoid the Same Dire Fate as Bear Stearns?

(NewsVisual, powered by IntellectSpace) -- After the implosion of The Bear Stearns Companies Inc (NYSE:BSC) during the weekend, nervous investors began to cast looks of dread toward other investment banks that included Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc (NYSE: LEH), which was beset by a barrage of media rumors suggesting that it would be the next large financial firm to fail.

Shocked “investors sold off the stock of Lehman Brothers and several other financial firms Monday,” The New York Times reported on Tuesday.

“Since the mortgage market crisis unfolded in the summer, investors have fretted that Lehman Brothers would stumble,” The Times article added.

While officials at Lehman contend the company has an adequate level of liquidity or funding, skeptics persist and they cast doubt on the soundness of the firm’s portfolio, believing it to be too highly leveraged in mortgaged-backed securities.

Regardless of the exact truth of the firm’s finances, Lehman must now work assiduously to restore investor confidence in order to avert having its share price go through a downward spiral in the world markets.

Therefore, NewsVisual decided to create an IntellectSpace Knowledge Map of Lehman’s Board of Directors in order to determine whether its members represented an adequate brain trust for helping to advise the firm through this crisis period.

The Knowledge Map shows that several of the Directors have connections to illustrious business-related institutions and corporations that could help them to better comprehend the true state of the economy.

For example, Lehman CEO/Chairman Richard S Fuld Jr also serves on the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; Lehman Director Christopher Gent also serves as the Chairman of GlaxoSmithKline Plc; and Lehman Director Roland A Hernandez, the retired CEO/Chairman of the Telemundo Group, also currently serves on the boards of MGM Mirage, The Ryland Group Inc, and Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

To see the details of other Lehman Directors, click here for an interactive and fuller version of this IntellectSpace Knowledge Map.

(Note: the information contained and presented in Knowledge Maps is public information from the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States of America).