Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 11-15 of 78
 Oh, for an editor! August 14, 2009
Bud Wonsiewicz (Boulder, CO USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I bought this because of the quotes in "COCKSURE
Banks, battles, and the psychology of overconfidence"
by Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker July 27, 2009.
The quotes were there alright and didn't disappoint. While I did learn something from
this 500 page tome, it would have been so much more valuable if it were 200 pages. There is
lots of repetition and gossip. It also presumes a lot of the reader. The jargon is dense and the author doesn't
make much effort to pull out the key concepts being discussed.
The topic is interesting, I'd love to recommend it to interested friends but I can't. The pleasure is not worth the pain.
It seems particularly endless when read on a Kindle.
 Fabulous story August 13, 2009
Mariusz Skonieczny (ClassicValueInvestors.blogspot.com)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Bear Stearns & Co. collapsed within a matter of 10 days. This book is the story of how it all happened. To many of general public, the collapse of the fifth-largest investment bank in such short period of time is simply beyond comprehension. The author tells step-by-step how it all happened. The story begins when Bennet Sedacca wrote on the website, dedicated to helping investors comprehend the financial world, that Bear Stearns & Co. was in big trouble. The trouble started with the "credit default swaps."
After reading this book, readers will change their attitude toward debt and leverage. Bear Stearns and other investment banks rely on short-term borrowing to operate their businesses. Everything works perfectly when this type of financing is available, but when no one is willing to lend them money, they can collapse within hours or days. This is simply a fabulous story. I highly recommend it to anyone.
- Mariusz Skonieczny, author of Why Are We So Clueless about the Stock Market? Learn how to invest your money, how to pick stocks, and how to make money in the stock market
 Entertaining and detailed, but lacks some clarity August 9, 2009
Vasiliy Zhulin (bay area, CA USA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
In this book, William D. Cohan sets out to give the reader an inside story of exactly what happened to Bear Stearns, an investment bank that collapsed in March 2008. He goes a long way - and comes very close. The book is extremely entertaining and full of interviews and quotes, clearly a testament to an enormous amount of research.
The book is split into three major parts. In the first portion, Cohan gives a minute-by-minute account of the events of March 2008. He describes a March 5, 2008 posting by a hedge fund manager that claimed the bank was insolvent. According to Cohen, this seemed to set off a domino effect that caused Bear's counterparties to stop overnight lending to the bank - which quickly led to a serious crisis of confidence. Ten days later, Bear Stearns was pushed into the arms of JPMorgan Chase by the Fed, which arranged non-recourse financing for Jamie Dimon's behemoth bank. It seemed that the Fed wanted to demonstrate that even large banks can fail - and that the US government won't always be there to save them. Therefore, Henry Paulson essentially instructed Jamie Dimon to give an extremely low offer for Bear's shareholders. Cohen gives an intriguing look into a blunder made by JPMorgan's lawyers, which put JPMorgan on the hook for Bear's credit guarantee, even if Bear's shareholders rejected the takeover. Jimmy Cayne's hardball tactics won Bear's shareholders an updated $10 per share offer (much better than the original $2 offer).
In the second part of the book, Cohen describes the entire history of Bear Stearns from its founding in 1923. He talks about Bear's three most prominent leaders - Salim (Cy) Lewis, Alan (Ace) Greenberg, and Jimmy Cayne. Each one has a detailed story - and I enjoyed all three very much. Cohen spends most time on Cayne, a very eccentric leader. In one of the chapters, Cohen describes Cayne's remarks at the 1998 rescue of the Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund. Cayne refused to contribute any of Bear's capital to the rescue, claiming that his firm had nothing to do with the trouble LTCM's counterparties got themselves into - which, of course, was true, but may have harmed Bear's reputation in the long run.
In the last third of the book, Cohen describes the last eight years of Bear's history. He focuses on Bear Stearns' two hedge funds run by Ralph Cioffi. Cioffi marketed the funds as extremely safe, whereas in reality they were turned out to have very volatile investment strategies. As the funds started to sink, Cioffi misled the investors and hid the losses, until some investors finally started to pull out their money. Cohen also talks about the growth of mortgage-backed security issuance, and how Bear played a huge part in underwriting such securities. Cohen blames not only issuers and investors, but also the government and its policies of helping lower-income classes buy houses. Alan Schwartz's final quote in the book sums it up nicely: "We all screwed up. Government. Rating agencies. Wall Street. Commercial banks. Regulators. Investors. Everybody." In the Epilogue, Cohen also gives a nice account of how Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, and how its investment banking business was purchased by Barclays - and how Merrill Lynch's business was acquired by Bank of America.
While the book was very enjoyable, in my opinion, it has two major flaws. First, Cohen fails to define and explain a lot of the financial concepts and terminology used in the book. He talks about repo markets, overnight lending, and collateral used by counterparties (which all played a big part in Bear's collapse), yet he doesn't explain these concepts - which essentially leaves the details shrouded for many readers not intimate with Wall Street's practices. Second, I felt like the book failed to describe exactly WHY both Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. While Cohen provided a lot of details of what occurred, at the end I struggled to summarize to myself why these two firms failed. Yes, there was a crisis of confidence, a run on the bank, and a large amount of toxic assets on the firms' balance sheets. But all I could remember about Bear Stearns is that the hedge fund manager's posting started a chain of events that led to the firm's sale. Clearly, that's not the complete picture.
In conclusion, I recommend the book to anyone interested in the events surrounding Bear Stearns' sale to JPMorgan Chase. While not a definitive answer to WHAT happened, it provides a fun historical account of the firm's eighty-five year existence.
Pros:
+ great read, exciting and well-written
+ excellent account of Bear Stearns' history from the very beginning
+ colorful description of the various characters involved (I really enjoyed reading about Jimmy Cayne)
+ lots of quotes from direct interviews with the characters
+ tremendous amount of research on Bear's business, including its hedge fund debacle
Cons:
- doesn't define/explain some financial concepts, such as the repo markets (which are pretty crucial to the story)
- doesn't seem to provide a clear definitive answer to exactly why Bear Stearns (and Lehman Brothers) failed
- feels rushed at certain parts, such as the Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch chapter (although that was a welcome addition)
 House of Cards -Mixed Review August 7, 2009
Czar Ivan (Usa)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I found the first half of the book almost impossible to read. It describes the events of March 20078 in excruciating detail using terms I as a non Wall Street person don't understand, and names that I couldn't remember. It was like an hourly journal of events.
Truth is I quit and turned to the second half.
Now the second half, Part 2 is a fascinating story of who these folks from Bear Stearns are, where they came, what makes them tick, and how they ran the company into the ground. I highly recommend it.
Not much analsyis August 6, 2009
pwb (Germantown, MD USA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
This book (unabridged on CD) is mostly exhaustive detail and just too hard to sit thru. There isn't much analsyis, only recounting of endless details (...then they did thus and such, and the like), with many repeats. I lost interest when the menu for one chicken lunch meeting during the 'crisis' was detailed. Maybe there was some redeaming analyses in the final chapter/chapters or in an ending summary but it was just too boring to sit thru to get there. ...and the old fashioned monotone narration didn't help.
Showing reviews 11-15 of 78
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