NEW YORK — The hope at Lehman Brothers is that a management shake-up Thursday will contain the damage of a stunning quarterly loss — yet some on Wall Street fear this is one more step toward a more dramatic outcome for the embattled investment bank.
The ouster of chief financial officer Erin Callan and chief operating officer Joseph Gregory was an attempt to quell investor anger that Lehman’s leadership has failed them. But, with a four-day stock plunge that wiped $4.5 billion from the investment bank’s market value, it was unclear whether the upheaval will be enough to satisfy critics.
“These people deserve to be fired,” said Dick Bove, an analyst with Ladenburg, Thalmann & Co. “Their mistakes cost their shareholders billions of dollars in wealth.”
Lehman shares fell 4.4 percent Thursday to $22.70 and are down 30 percent this week.
The decline is a blow to investors who bought into a stock offering at $28 earlier this week — including BlackRock Inc. and former AIG chief Hank Greenberg.
Richard Fuld, who took the company public in 1994, has kept a low profile in recent days by refusing interviews and commenting only through a statement about the dismissals.
There is growing speculation that Fuld might scramble to find a major outside investor or negotiate a sale to avoid his own firing by Lehman’s board.
