Richard Fuld, the former chief executive of failed investment bank Lehman Brothers, said the bank might have survived if US financial regulators had made different decisions, in prepared testimony for a hearing on Wednesday.

Fuld said that the same "uncontrollable market forces" that led to Lehman's demise threatened the stability of other banks. "But Lehman was the only firm that was mandated by government regulators to file for bankruptcy. The government then was forced to intervene to protect those other firms and the entire financial system," Fuld said in his prepared remarks to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, a congressionally created panel charged with investigating the causes of the financial crisis.