NEW YORK • Richard Fuld will step down as chief executive of failed investment bank Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. by the end of the year and won’t receive severance or a bonus, a spokesman said Wednesday. He will stay on as chairman of the board.

Fuld faced growing pressure to give up the job of chief executive as critics accused him of contributing to the demise of the nation’s fourth-largest investment bank. He has been a prominent target of public outrage over risky practices on Wall Street that helped send the economy spiraling into turmoil.

The announcement came one day after New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli accused Fuld of leading Lehman to its chaotic Chapter 11 filing on Sept. 15.

“Mr. Fuld’s decisions drove the company toward ruin, as his board stood idly by,” DiNapoli argued in court papers filed late Tuesday asking a bankruptcy judge to appoint an independent investigator in the case.

Fuld had offered to resign after Lehman sold its broker-dealer business to Barclays

Capital, but Chief Restructuring Officer Bryan Marsal asked him to stay till year’s end to help with the transition, a spokesman said.

The bankruptcy filing of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. was the biggest in U.S. history.It entered court protection with assets of $639 billion and debt of $613 billion.

Since the filing, Fuld – along with 11 former or current Lehman managers or officers – have been subpoenaed by federal prosecutors in three grand jury investigations.

Fuld received compensation valued at $22.1 million in 2007, according to an Associated Press calculation of his pay package.

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