NEW YORK - Lehman Bros. Chief Executive Richard Fuld on Monday took the blame for the company's staggering second-quarter loss and said the investment bank was too slow in reacting to the credit crisis.

"This is my responsibility," Fuld declared in his first comments since the bank last week forecast a loss of nearly $3 billion from bad bets in mortgage-backed securities and other risky investments. As the longest-serving CEO left on Wall Street, Fuld's mission is to restore confidence to the firm's tarnished image.

"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," Fuld said on a conference call with analysts.

He pointed out that the investment house has acted quickly after recording its first loss since going public in 1994. Lehman last week raised $6 billion of fresh capital and demoted its chief financial officer and chief operating officer.

Lehman also reduced the size of its balance sheet by $147 billion, more than Fuld had targeted for the quarter. Meanwhile, it slashed mortgage holdings by 20 percent - higher than the original forecast of 15 percent.

Many of the reductions came from unstable mortgage-backed securities and leveraged loans that caused financial companies globally to write down nearly $300 billion since last year. The crisis has caused the ouster of Fuld's peers from Merrill Lynch & Co. and Citigroup Inc., and nearly caused the collapse of Bear Stearns before it was sold to JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Wall Street is awaiting second-quarter results from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. today and Morgan Stanley on Wednesday.

Fuld, while not able to rule out the possibility of further problems, said he's "gotten the message" and is comfortable with the investment bank's current positions.

And investors appear to have regained some confidence in Fuld. Shares of the company, which last week plunged by 30 percent before rebounding Friday, rose $1.39, or 5.4 percent, to close at $27.20 Monday.

"Lehman's survival as an independent entity should not be at stake," said Chermaine Lee, an analyst with Boston-based financial consulting firm Celent.