Would you trust this man to give you financial advice?

Not sure how we missed this back in April/May, but the best things do have a habit of coming round more than once: As part of its coverage of the one-year anniversary of the financial crisis, The Wall Street Journal (among others) has knocked up a special report on former Lehman Brothers CEO Dick Fuld. In the article, there is the startling revelation (to me, anyway) that Mr. Fuld--the man who presided over the most costly bankruptcy in history--"has opened a financial-advisory firm," known as Matrix Advisors, and that "[h]e has given hours of free advice to a firm run by a former Lehman employee, say people familiar with the matter."

The plot thickens over on Reuters, however. The redoubtable news organization's "sources," are clearly a little better informed than the Journal's "people familiar with the matter." For those sources were able to tell Reuters that Fuld is "doing some work for restructuring firm Alvarez and Marsal, helping to unwind Lehman free of charge."

Even more confusingly, should you happen to conduct a Google search for Matrix Advisors, you get a firm that doesn't appear to have anything to do with Fuld, and which has been in existence since the 1980s.

All of which means that Fuld is out there somewhere, doing something that no-one can quite put their finger on. It would appear that he's definitely established himself--at least partially, and for free at the moment--in the consulting field. Which raises the question raised in the headline. Well, would you?

Associated Press/Susan Walsh

--Posted by Phil Stott, Vault Staff Writer