You don’t look after U.S. security without learning the value of a little intelligence gathering. Former national security adviser Sandy Berger, who in April founded Stonebridge International to provide strategic advice to multinationals, spent a few months shopping around Wall Street before settling upon Lehman Brothers, where he became a senior adviser. What was the attraction? Aside from hitting it off with Lehman chairman Dick Fuld, Berger liked the fact that many of the firm’s top brass had been working together for more than 20 years. He spent 16 years as an international lawyer for Hogan & Hartson before joining the Clinton administration in 1992. Berger notes that the business world has changed dramatically: “The dynamism of the private sector in the years that I was in the public sector has grown exponentially. Investment banking is a great vantage point on what’s happening internationally.” And he plans on digging in. “I don’t want to be arranging meetings. I want to be delivering strategies to help Lehman and others.” Would he ever consider hiring his former boss, Bill Clinton, once rumored to be eyeing an investment banking job on Wall Street?
“I don’t think I could afford him,” Berger says.
