History of specific companies / corporate history Books

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Book Synopsis“Ace Greenberg did almost everything better than I do—bridge, magic tricks, dog training, and arbitrage—all the important things in life.” —WARREN BUFFETT Alan C. Greenberg, the former chairman of Bear, Stearns, and a celebrated philanthropist, was known throughout the financial world for his biting, quirky but invaluable and wise memos. Read by everyone from Warren Buffett to Jeff Bezos to Tom Peters (“I love this book,” the coauthor of In Search of Excellence said), Greenberg’s MEMOS FROM THE CHAIRMAN comprise a unique—and uniquely simple—management philosophy. Make decisions based on common sense. Avoid the herd mentality. Control expenses with unrelenting vigil. Run your business at the highest level of morality. Free your motivated, intelligent people from the chain of command. Always return phone calls promptly and courteously. Never believe your own body odor is perfume. And stay humble, humble, humble.

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Book SynopsisIt was the most brutal corporate restructuring in Wall Street history. The 2015 bankruptcy brawl for the storied casino giant, Caesars Entertainment, pitted brilliant and ruthless private equity legends against the world's most relentless hedge fund wizards. In the tradition of Barbarians at the Gate and The Big Short comes the riveting, multi-dimensional poker game between private equity firms and distressed debt hedge funds that played out from the Vegas Strip to Manhattan boardrooms to Chicago courthouses and even, for a moment, the halls of the United States Congress. On one side: relentless financial engineers Marc Rowan, David Sambur, and David Bonderman with their teams at Apollo Global Management and TPG Capital. On the other: superstar distressed debt investors Dave Miller and Ryan Mollett with their cohorts at the likes of Elliott Management, Oaktree Capital, and Appaloosa Management. The Caesars bankruptcy put a twist on the old-fashioned casino heist. Through a $27 billion leveraged buyout and a dizzying string of financial engineering transactions, Apollo and TPG—in the midst of the post-Great Recession slump—had seemingly snatched every prime asset of the company from creditors, with the notable exception of Caesars Palace. But Caesars’ hedge fund lenders and bondholders had scooped up the company’s paper for nickels and dimes. And with their own armies of lawyers and bankers, they were ready to do everything necessary to take back what they believed was theirs—if they could just stop their own infighting. These modern financiers now dominate the scene in Corporate America as their fight-to-the-death mentality continues to shock workers, politicians, and broader society—and even each other. In The Caesars Palace Coup, financial journalists Max Frumes and Sujeet Indap illuminate the brutal tactics of distressed debt mavens—vultures, as they are condemned—in the sale and purchase of even the biggest companies in the world with billions of dollars hanging in the balance.Trade ReviewPraise for The Caesars Palace Coup"The strength of [The Caesars Palace Coup] is its vivid, behind-the-scenes footage of the insiders who now dominate the largest corporate bankruptcy cases, vignettes that will enliven many a law or business-school class in the next decade."—Wall Street Journal“The Caesars Palace Coup recounts in exquisite detail the extraordinary lengths that Marc Rowan and David Sambur, his Apollo partner, went to stave off the inevitable bankruptcy filing of Caesars in 2015, and the extraordinary lengths they went to during the two-year bankruptcy process to try to salvage their investment.”—Vanity Fair “An investigative deep-dive into an old-fashioned casino heist, which includes a $31 billion leveraged buyout and a string of financial engineering transactions by Apollo Global Management and TPG Capital—all in the midst of the post–Great Recession slump, pitting private equity firms and distressed-debt hedge funds against each other in an ultimate poker match.” —Fortune “A casino caper and legal thriller rolled into one…. An eccentric Illinois judge, whose final ruling ultimately stunned bankruptcy aficionados, and the rantings from the Masters of the Universe make the book entertaining, maybe essential, reading across Wall Street…. The Caesars Palace Coup helps make clear what such Wall Street clashes are really about: men with big egos swinging their lacrosse sticks.” —Reuters Breakingviews “Lawyers and bankers duke it out in this thorough if dry history of the downfall of the Caesars Entertainment empire…. a welcome respite from stodgier case studies.” —Publishers Weekly “The Caesars Palace Coup is a superb inside account of what modern high finance is actually like—the strategies, the personalities, the relationships, the stress, and the shouting. Fascinating, suspenseful, and comprehensive, it is the Barbarians at the Gate of distressed debt.” —Matt Levine, Money Stuff columnist, Bloomberg Opinion “No story better captures early 21st century Wall Street like the bankruptcy of Caesars Entertainment. The Caesars Palace Coup is a well-researched, engaging modern-day corporate thriller, filled with epic courtroom and boardroom battles and the kinds of colorful characters that only exist on the buy-side. This is the fascinating inside story of a clash of the titans—the who’s who of distressed hedge funds battling each other and private equity giants Apollo and TPG for their piece of the Las Vegas casino conglomerate. . . . [A] must read for anyone who loves the deals and the drama that so often characterize the ins and outs of Wall Street and corporate restructuring.” —Kristin Mugford, Harvard Business School “In The Caesars Palace Coup, two of Wall Street’s most plugged-in journalists take us deep inside corporate raiding, 21st century style. Exploiting distressed debt instead of undervalued stock, buccaneer hedge funds and other vulture investors pay seventy, sixty, sometimes less than fifty cents on the dollar to scoop up controlling stakes in troubled companies. This breathtaking narrative culminates in bitter financial and courtroom warfare as Apollo Global Management, its allies, and its high-powered lawyers and lobbyists maneuver relentlessly against equally savvy investors to freeze them out of the resulting rise in profits and force them to accept a ‘cramdown’ settlement of their stakes in the company.” —Paul Steiger, former Wall Street Journal managing editor and founding editor of ProPublica “The distressed debt markets are the most rough-and-tumble corner of Wall Street, and Indap and Frumes have written the best book yet on the machinations, power moves, and personalities of the investors who make fortunes rolling the distressed debt dice.” —Jared A. Ellias, Bion M. Gregory Chair in Business Law, the University of California, Hastings "There is so much to like in this book. Its primary strength is its Law & Order backstory, peeling back the onion of every major player...Four years of painstaking personal interviews have paid off handsomely in this fascinating account of the inner workings of big money and big law reorganization practice." —Jason Kilborn, Credit Slips

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Book SynopsisThe dramatic story of the last fifty years of the Speyer banking dynasty, a Jewish family of German descent, is surprisingly little known today, yet at the turn of the 20th century, Speyer was the third largest investment banking firm in the United States, behind only Morgan and Kuhn, Loeb. It had branches in London, Frankfurt and New York, and the projects it financed included the Southern Pacific Railroad, the London Underground and the infrastructure of the new Cuban republic. Later, it was the first major banking firm to finance Germany's Weimar Republic, as well as providing League of Nations loans to Hungary, Greece and Bulgaria. Yet, the firm was doomed by the nationalist passions aroused by World War I. Its English partner was denaturalised and exiled; its American partner enjoyed reduced standing because of his connection to Germany; and the Frankfurt branch closed with the coming of the Third Reich, its German partner fleeing into exile. The firm was dissolved in 1939, a surprisingly anticlimactic end to one of the great international banking companies of modern times. George W. Liebmann here tells the story of the firm and the family - shedding new light on the protagonists of a remarkable dynasty, who came undone in the dramatic years of the early 20th century.Table of ContentsIntroduction Early Days ENGLAND The London Tube / English Philanthropy / The House of Music / The Scott Expeditions / Leonora / Influence on the Liberal Party / Anti-Germanism and Its Consequences AMERICA Mediation Efforts / Ellin / U.S. Railway Promotions / Cuban Loans / Philippine Railroads / Mexican Railroads / Brazilian Loans / Industrial and Municipal Investments GERMANY Rehabilitating Central Europe / Last Days in Germany Epilogue: James Speyer Kronthal

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Book SynopsisIntroduction Research Topics and Analytical Framework.- History of Globalism of Hegemonic Countries and Its Influences.- Overview of the Total System of Business Management in Germany Comparison of Periods of the Second Reich the Weimar Republic National Socialism and the Postwar Era.- Enterprise Concentration Formation of Monopolistic Capitalism and Business Management.- German Enterprises Attempts at Labor Management System Reforms and Deployment of the Taylor System.

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