The intimate, fly-on-the wall tale of the decline and fall of an
America icon
With one notable exception, the firms that make up what we know as
Wall Street have always been part of an inbred, insular culture
that most people only vaguely understand. The exception was Merrill
Lynch, a firm that revolutionized the stock market by bringing Wall
Street to Main Street, setting up offices in far-flung cities and
towns long ignored by the giants of finance. With its "thundering
herd" of financial advisers, perhaps no other business, whether in
financial services or elsewhere, so epitomized the American spirit.
Merrill Lynch was not only "bullish on America," it was a big
reason why so many average Americans were able to grow wealthy by
investing in the stock market.
Merrill Lynch was an icon. Its sudden decline, collapse, and sale
to Bank of America was a shock. How did it happen? Why did it
happen? And what does this story of greed, hubris, and incompetence
tell us about the culture of Wall Street that continues to this day
even though it came close to destroying the American economy? A
culture in which the CEO of a firm losing $28 billion pushes hard
to be paid a $25 million bonus. A culture in which two Merrill
Lynch executives are guaranteed bonuses of $30 million and $40
million for four months' work, even while the firm is struggling to
reduce its losses by firing thousands of employees.
Based on unparalleled sources at both Merrill Lynch and Bank of
America, Greg Farrell's "Crash of the Titans" is a Shakespearean
saga of three flawed masters of the universe. E. Stanley O'Neal,
whose inspiring rise from the segregated South to the corner office
of Merrill Lynch--where he engineered a successful turnaround--was
undone by his belief that a smooth-talking salesman could handle
one of the most difficult jobs on Wall Street. Because he enjoyed
O'Neal's support, this executive was allowed to build up an
astonishing $30 billion position in CDOs on the firm's balance
sheet, at a time when all other Wall Street firms were desperately
trying to exit the business. After O'Neal comes John Thain, the
cerebral, MIT-educated technocrat whose rescue of the New York
Stock Exchange earned him the nickname "Super Thain." He was hired
to save Merrill Lynch in late 2007, but his belief that the markets
would rebound led him to underestimate the depth of Merrill's
problems. Finally, we meet Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis, a street
fighter raised barely above the poverty line in rural Georgia,
whose "my way or the highway" management style suffers fools more
easily than potential rivals, and who made a $50 billion commitment
over a September weekend to buy a business he really didn't
understand, thus jeopardizing his own institution.
The merger itself turns out to be a bizarre combination of cultures
that blend like oil and water, where slick Wall Street bankers
suddenly find themselves reporting to a cast of characters straight
out of the "Beverly Hillbillies." BofA's inbred culture, which
perceived New York banks its enemies, was based on loyalty and a
good-ol'-boy network in which competence played second fiddle to
blind obedience.
"
Crash of the Titans" is a financial thriller that puts you in the
theater as the historic events of the financial crisis unfold and
people responsible for billion of dollars of other people's money
gamble recklessly to enhance their power and their paychecks or to
save their own skins. Its wealth of never-before-revealed
information and focus on two icons of corporate America make it the
book that puts together all the pieces of the Wall Street disaster.
"From the Hardcover edition."
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