Wachovia, Lehman Chiefs Face Fed Panel Next Week

WASHINGTON (TheStreet) -- The former chief executives of Wachovia and Lehman Brothers are scheduled to be examined by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) next week.

Former Wachovia CEO and president Robert Steel, as well as former Lehman chairman and CEO of Richard 'Dick' Fuld, are set to testify at the FCIC's hearings on Wednesday and Thursday.

Steel and Fuld will testify along with JPMorgan Chase's (JPM) Chief Risk Officer Barry Zubrow, in addition to several representatives from the Federal Reserve, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and FDIC Chairwoman Sheila Bair will testify on Thursday.

Steel and Fuld are the latest in a long line of of financial services industry executives to be grilled by federal inquiry.

Since January, the FCIC has held six hearings in which current and former executives were scrutinized over their firms' roles in the financial crisis of the past three years. Steel, who was only CEO of Wachovia for a brief period, was able to sell his struggling bank in late 2008 to Wells Fargo (WFC) before it went under.

Fuld, on the other hand, was not as lucky. Lehman's failure nearly two years ago marked a pivotal point, causing the stock markets to plunge as clients fled from the firm and other banks looked to seize collateral from the investment firm on fears of failure. Lehman filed for bankruptcy on Sept. 15, 2008. A few days later Barclays (BCS) stepped in and said it would acquire a good portion of Lehman's businesses.

Other former executives that have also been paraded in front of the Commission included Citigroup's (C) former CEO Chuck Prince. The Commission also heard testimony from big bank executives including JPMorgan's Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon, Goldman Sachs (GS) CEO Lloyd Blankfein, and Bank of America's (BAC) CEO Brian Moynihan, among others.

--Written by Laurie Kulikowski in New York.

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