For many commentators, Richard Fuld, CEO of Lehman Brothers, the Wall Street investment whose collapse triggered the global financial crisis, is the quintessential representative of greedy and irresponsible "masters of the universe" whose arcane financial operations have brought the world economy to its knees.

CNN named Fuld as one of the "Ten Most Wanted" culprits of the 2008 financial collapse, and New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof awarded him his annual Michael Eisner Award "for corporate rapacity and poor corporate governance".

Richard Severin Fuld Junior is a classic corporate man. He began his career with Lehman Brothers in 1969 as trader, and has stayed there since, gradually rising through the ranks.

Although relatively modest by the standards of American CEOs, Fuld's pay packet would still seem staggering to ordinary US citizens whose salaries – according to Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman – have not risen in real terms since the early 1970s. Executive pay research company Equilar estimates Fuld was paid US$45 million in 2007, and that his total "compensation package" since 1993 amounted to half a billion dollars, including payouts of US$91m in 2001 and US$89m in 2005.

On October 6, 2008, Fuld testified before a Congressional Committee on the Lehman Brothers collapse. His stone-faced defense of his pay-packet when grilled about his $14m ocean-front villa in Florida, his home in the exclusive ski resort of Sun Valley and his wife's multi-million dollar art collection, will have won him few new friends.

Some may see it as delightfully ironic that Fuld serves on the board of directors of a New York charity called the Robin Hood Foundation.

(China.org.cn by John Sexton, November 13, 2008)