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.... into bankruptcy and could have survived In an appearance marking his return to the public eye, Richard Fuld Jr. insisted he doesn’t want to play “woulda, coulda, shoulda” about the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. But the former chief executive, speaking Thursday to a crowd of more than 1,500 people at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Midtown Manhattan, was unrepentant about his late firm’s culture and its role in the financial crisis, largely placing the blame instead on misguided government and central-bank policy and irresponsible borrowers. At times jocular and reflective, the 69-year-old also flashed his combative side. When asked why he didn’t simply ride off into the sunset after Lehman’s collapse, Mr. Fuld responded, “Why don’t you just bite me?” He quickly followed up by saying he couldn’t give up and felt he had “no choice” but to start his new firm, Matrix Advisors LLC. As the keynote lunch speaker at the 2015 Marcum MicroCap Conference in New York, Mr. Fuld spoke before a sympathetic crowd. His remarks, keenly awaited on Wall Street, were broadcast live for several minutes on CNBC. Mr. Fuld, who joined Lehman Brothers after college and spent 38 years there, has kept a low profile since the firm’s bankruptcy in 2008. In speaking of his return to the public eye, he joked that he doesn’t count his “wonderful time with Congress” as a public appearance and called the conference catering to small and midsize businesses the right venue for re-entering public life. Mr. Fuld’s comments about Lehman were broadly consistent with his testimony before Congress in October of 2008, when he was dubbed a “villain” by one U.S. representative and another said, “You don’t acknowledge that you did anything wrong, and that is troubling to me.” Mr. Fuld on Thursday reiterated that he had “no regrets.” He outlined what he called the “perfect storm” of events that led to the financial crisis, saying “it all started with the government” and policies that subsidized cheap loans for people to buy homes in order to help them chase the American dream. The ex-bank executive later added lax regulators, homeowners who used equity on their houses “as ATM accounts” and the explosive growth of hedge funds as other contributors to the economic meltdown. Mr. Fuld said he is comfortable he did everything possible to save the 158-year-old firm, which employed 25,000 people when it collapsed. Speaking less than 12 blocks from Lehman’s former headquarters, Mr. Fuld argued the firm was “mandated into bankruptcy” and could have survived the credit crunch that swept the country in late 2008. He defended the bank’s capital structure at the time and listed several metrics as evidence, such as its Tier 1 capital ratio of 11%, which is well above the level currently required for big banks. He said more information would come out that showing Lehman was “not a bankrupt company in 2008.” It wasn’t clear what Mr. Fuld was referring to, and he didn’t take questions after the event. In a scathing report in 2010, bankruptcy-court examiner Anton Valukas concluded that Lehman officials chose to “disregard or overrule the firm’s risk controls on a regular basis,” even as the credit and real-estate markets were showing signs of strain. Mr. Valukas declined to comment on Mr. Fuld’s remarks. Mr. Fuld’s supporters said it was important for him to defend his old firm and his own conduct. “It does really irk him a great deal” to be called a villain, said William Uchimoto, a securities lawyer who has traveled twice to China with Mr. Fuld on business trips. Mr. Uchimoto called Mr. Fuld “a victim of circumstance” who still has a lot of energy for his business ventures. “He doesn’t need redemption. He looks in the mirror every day … and sees someone that did an honest effort to try to do the right things, and he will still continue to do the right things,” Mr. Uchimoto said. Former U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, a frequent critic of Wall Street and co-author of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial-reform law, said Mr. Fuld’s logic didn’t add up. “Yes there was a failure in regulation,” said Mr. Frank, who retired in 2013. But he added, “I can’t think of any law that applied to Lehman that made them buy” bad loans. On several occasions Thursday, Mr. Fuld nodded to his unpopular standing among many Americans. At one point, he noted that his 96-year-old mother still loved him and another time said it is “time for me to raise my ugly head” David Karlin, a managing director at Mr. Fuld’s new firm, Matrix, said the company has 11 full-time employees and about a dozen active clients in an “eclectic” range of industries. The companies it advises typically are valued at less than $250 million, he said. Mr. Fuld started his remarks with a brief discussion of what he described as Lehman’s client-first culture and its compensation practices, which he said fostered a sense of teamwork. “Regardless of what you heard about Lehman’s risk management, I had 27,000 risk managers, because they all owned a piece of the firm,” he said. The bank’s employees collectively held more than 30% of Lehman’s stock, he said. Mr. Fuld ended his talk on a reflective note, encouraging members of the audience to “balance between life and death all the time,” “create your own luck,” and “be able to open your heart, love and be loved.” He counseled the audience to, like him, live life with no regrets but admitted that “not a day goes by” where he doesn’t think about Lehman Brothers.