Dick Fuld, Lehman Brothers’ chief executive, took personal responsibility on Monday for the investment bank’s embarrassing $2.8bn second-quarter loss, the first in its 14-year history as a public company, and said he remained confident in its future prospects as an independent entity.

“This is my responsibility,” Mr Fuld said during a rare appearance on a conference call to discuss quarterly earnings. “We made active decisions to deploy our capital, some of which in hindsight were poor choices because we really didn’t act quickly enough to the eroding environment.”