Lehman Brothers Chairman and Chief Executive Richard Fuld, who had met Kasich during the presidential campaign, offered him a job on Wall Street, according to a 2001 article in The New York Observer.
When Kasich began, he lacked investment banking experience and he required extensive tutoring, according to Gary Weinstein, his former supervisor at Lehman Brothers.
Simultaneous to his Lehman Brothers job, Kasich hosted “From the Heartland” on Fox News and pitched in as a substitute host on The O’Reilly Factor. He published the second of his three books and delivered motivational speeches.
And he served as a presidential fellow at Ohio State University from 2002 to 2009. He worked roughly one to five days a month – giving lectures, posing a question of the month to first-year Mount Scholars, and serving as a panelist at forums.
The OSU fellowship paid Kasich $50,000 a year, plus $20,000 a year to Don Thibaut, Kasich’s long-time political ally.
Kasich’s time as an investment banker ended when Lehman Brothers collapsed and helped trigger a costly, widespread economic slump that led to one in 10 Americans being out of work, a scary plunge of the stock market, and federal bailouts for banks and auto companies.
“To blame me for the collapse of Lehman is like blaming a car dealer in Zanesville for the collapse of General Motors. Let’s get real here,” Kasich said during the 2010 gubernatorial campaign when Democrats tried to tie him to the financial meltdown.
Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols said in 2010 that Kasich worked on Wall Street for only eight months before running a two-person Lehman office in Columbus as one of 700 managing directors working for Lehman worldwide.
The private sector proved to be lucrative for Kasich, who allowed reporters a glimpse at his 2008 tax returns. The documents showed Kasich made $1.4 million that year, including $587,175 in salary and bonus at Lehman Brothers, $265,000 as Fox News commentator, $61,538 as Schottenstein Property Group Associate, $165,719 in speaking fees and $77,273 in corporate board director fees. His investment portfolio alone made him $121,922 in interest and dividends in 2008.
In June 2015, Kasich told Time Magazine that he had no regrets from his time at Lehman Brothers.
“It was fantastic. Are you kidding? Regrets? I thought it was a fantastic time. I traveled all over the country. I got an incredible education. I worked my tail off. It was great,” Time reported Kasich saying.
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