Lewis Glucksman, 80; Lehman Bros. Trader Rose to Chief Executive

Lewis Glucksman, 80, the former Lehman Bros. Kuhn Loeb chief executive officer whose feud with Peter Peterson led to the firm’s sale to American Express Co. in 1984, died Wednesday at his home in Cork, Ireland, after suffering from a long illness.

Glucksman joined Lehman, then a privately held firm, in 1963 and is credited with turning it into a bond trading powerhouse as he worked his way from trading into successively higher management positions.

After rising to co-CEO, Glucksman beat out Peterson, now 80, for control of the then-closely held company in 1983. The battle was documented in the 1986 Ken Auletta book “Greed and Glory on Wall Street.” After profits plunged in late 1983 and early 1984, Lehman’s partners were forced to sell to American Express for $380 million.

Born Dec. 22, 1925, to Hungarian Jewish parents, Glucksman grew up in Manhattan and served as a teenage volunteer in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He earned a master’s in business administration at New York University and in 1993 co-founded the school’s Ireland House, a center of Irish studies, with his wife, Loretta Brennan Glucksman.