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Street Fighters: The Last 72 Hours of Bear Stearns, the Toughest Firm on Wall Street |  | Author: Kate Kelly
Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $11.70
as of 11/8/2009 02:35 CST details
You Save: $14.25 (55%)
New (42) Used (20) Collectible (1) from $10.72
Seller: yippsterz
Rating:  28 reviews
Sales Rank: 7741
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 256
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6 x 1
ISBN: 1591842735
Dewey Decimal Number: 332.660973
EAN: 9781591842736
ASIN: 1591842735
Publication Date: May 12, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The shocking fall of Bear Stearns in March 2008 set off a wave of global financial turmoil that continues to ripple. How could one of the oldest, most resilient firms on Wall Street go so far astray that it had to be sold at a fire sale price? How could the guys who ran Bear so aggressively miscalculate so completely?
In this vivid and dramatic narrative, Kate Kelly takes us inside Bear's walls during its final, frenzied 72 hours as an independent firm. Expanding with fresh detail from her acclaimed front- page series in The Wall Street Journal, she captures every sight, sound, and smell of those three unbelievable days.
For decades, Bear had proudly recruited "P.S.Ds"- employees who were poor, smart, and had a deep desire to become rich. An elite family or Ivy League diploma didn't matter. Were you willing to do almost anything to make money for the firm? Were you tough enough to be a street fighter?
Bear's leaders were arrogant and didn't play nice. But their style had made them a fortune, and had helped Bear survive every crisis from the Great Depression to the dotcom bubble.
Yet as the subprime mortgage crisis began to brew, the firm's key executives descended into civil war. Kelly reveals fresh, never-before-told details about the moves that led to that brutal final weekend.
With a style as riveting as it is enlightening, Street Fighters is the definitive account of a once-great firm's demise, and the human folly that led to the worst financial crisis since the 1930s.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 28
 An Easy Read October 20, 2009
Steven Schwartz (johnson city, ny United States)
Pros: I flew through this book. If you want the basics of the Bear Stearns Story here it is in a little over 200 easy pages.
Cons: The "meat" of the story is basically a long magazine article. Interspersed throughout are asides about so and so's childhood and so and so's pot smoking habit. I would have appreciated a little more technical analysis.
An Ok Read as the Market Faltered September 15, 2009
Kenneth H. Marks (Raleigh, North Carolina)
In general I think the author did a good job of setting-up the background and recounting the final hours of Bear Stearns. I enjoyed gaining insight into the cultures and personalities of the various investment banks, and especially Bear. This was particularly insightful if you've read some of the other books about our market's history and trials...i.e. When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management. There are a lot of parallels from a decade earlier. My only complaint is that it could have been shorter, but overall, I'd recommend investors read it. Kenneth H. Marks, lead author of The Handbook of Financing Growth: Strategies, Capital Structure, and M&A Transactions (Wiley Finance)
 john b September 10, 2009
John A. Banno
Very good book with hour by hour account of happenings. As former banker(retired) it was riviting.
Depends on what you're really looking for August 26, 2009
Kivanc Cubukcu (NY, USA)
Expectedly just as in every book review, people have very different opinions regarding Kate Kelly's work. In my opinion if you're looking for a very general synopsis of what happened to the giant investment bank as a whole, this book will disappoint you. However if you're already aware of the hedge fund collapse during summer of 2007, Bear's "liquidity problem" gossips circulating around Wall Street for weeks even months, and want to get a more detailed rundown on what really happened in those past 3 days, then look no further because you found the correct reading material. I also enjoyed the writers style where talking about senior members of the bank (Molinaro, Cayne, "Ace" Greenberg, etc) she pauses the story for a little while and gives some background information about their career and life stories which is quite informative. The book is also written in a way where you feel like you are living the catastrophe with the upper management by describing little details here and there that gives the work a true excitement. I certainly enjoyed this book and would recommend it to readers who are interested in learning how this investment banking giant came to its knees in just a matter of 3 days.
 A more entertaining book... August 26, 2009
Jon Swift (Baghdad, Iraq)
A more entertaining book is Bahrabian Bacchanal- The Untold Story about Arabia by Abu Mohammed .. it reveals the exploits of an ex-Goldman Sachs banker and an ex-SAC trader in Saudi and other parts of the Middle East.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 28
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