Seven years after the largest bankruptcy in US history, the ex-CEO of Lehman Brothers maintains that the bank was not broke.

Reuters reports Richard Fuld Jr told an audience of 1,300 at a micro cap stock conference in Manhattan that "Lehman Brothers in 2008 was not a bankrupt company."

Unwilling to place blame on himself, Fuld blamed the financial crisis on a "perfect storm" and the bank's collapse on short sellers, the federal government, and other outside factors.

"Regardless of what you heard about Lehman's risk management, I had 27,000 risk managers at the firm [all employees were shareholders] because they all owned a piece of the firm," he said.

Though later reports would show Lehman executives used accounting gimmicks to make its finances appear more secure, Fuld defended his decisions and said the collapse was fundamentally an issue of liquidity:

"You have to have enough liquidity to ride out the storm. Been there. Done that. No comment."

When asked by an attendee why he chose to make his first public appearance at an industry event, he said he was trying to move on:

"Not a day goes by where I don't think about Lehman Brothers." he said. "I'd love to tell you I'm over it, it's behind me. Doesn't happen."

He now runs a small merchant banking firm called Matrix Advisors.

Fuld was famously punched unconscious by an employee while on a treadmill at the office gym shortly after the bankruptcy announcement.