The short sellers did it, Richard Fuld, former Lehman Brothers chief executive, said in testimony to Congressional committee yesterday.

In an extraordinary public autopsy into the biggest bankruptcy in US history, Mr Fuld declared that he felt “horrible” about what had happened to the venerable investment bank, but insisted Lehman was brought down by a crisis in confidence in the marketplace, combined with a plague of naked short selling.

By blaming the short sellers, Mr Fuld echoed the testimony of a fellow victim of the credit crisis earlier this year. Alan Schwartz, former chief executive of Bear Stearns, told a Senate committee in April short sellers had helped create a run on the bank, which sapped Bear Stearns’ liquidity and eventually forced it into a shotgun marriage to JPMorgan Chase.