Book: Lehman No. 2 more guilty than Fuld

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Move over, Dick Fuld.

The most treacherous man on Wall Street is his Lehman Brothers second-in-command — former President Joe Gregory.

At least that’s how Gregory is portrayed in an upcoming book, “The Devil’s Casino,” by Vanity Fair contributing editor Vicky Ward — which details the Phoenix-like rise and tragic demise of the 158-year-old bond house.

Although Fuld gets his fair share of blame in the Wall Street novel, but it seems Ward lays much of the blame for poisoning the venerable firm and undermining its “one firm” credo at the feet of Gregory.

Ward says that Gregory has told people that he had nothing to lose in bringing a $233 million claim against the bankrupt Lehman’s assets. “Fuld disagreed: They’d all gotten rich but they’d lost the firm,” Ward writes.

Best described as John Grisham’s “The Firm” meets Michael Lewis’ financial yarn “Liar’s Poker,” Ward’s book pulls few punches in its unrelenting depiction of Gregory. It casts him as the villain of Lehman Brothers, whose underhanded manipulative nature throughout much of his 30-year tenure at the investment partnership ultimately helped set the stage for the firm’s Sept. 15, 2008, bankruptcy.

At the time, the firm had $639 billion in assets, making its filing the largest bankruptcy in history.

Ward’s tome hinges on diaries from key executives recorded five years before it would become a cautionary tale and exclusively obtained by Ward.

Ironically, the recordings that help the author craft the part-historical tale/part-high tension soap opera were requested back in 2003 by Gregory, who wanted to put together a modern history of the firm.

He later abandoned the mission because the portrayal of the firm cast Gregory and Fuld as detached, shallow managers focused more on flash than substance.

Ward’s book goes back some 30 years ago to the nascence of the firm, focusing on a band of friends including Gregory and former Lehman exec Chris Pettit — a charismatic Vietnam veteran who helped craft the modern Lehman Brothers but lost his moral compass and ultimately died in a snowmobile accident after Gregory helped push him out of the firm.

“The Devil’s Casino,” which hits the shelves April 1, comes after a lot of post-Lehman credit tsunami books already have been released, and Wards ends up culling from a lot of other source material.