Fatal Risk: A Cautionary Tale of AIG's Corporate Suicide - Rilegato

Boyd, Roddy

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0470889802 ISBN 13: 9780470889800

Casa editrice: Wiley, 2011

Riassunto

Long-listed for the FT & Goldman Sachs Business Book of theYear Award 2011

The true story of how risk destroys, as told through theongoing saga of AIG

From the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, thesubject of the financial crisis has been well covered. However, thestory central to the crisis-that of AIG-has until now remainedlargely untold. Fatal Risk: A Cautionary Tale of AIG's CorporateSuicide tells the inside story of what really went on insideAIG that caused it to choke on risk and nearly brining down theentire economic system. The book

• Reveals inside information available nowhere else, includingthe personal notes and records of key players such as the formerChairman of AIG, Hank Greenberg
• Takes readers behind the scenes at the U.S. Treasury and theFederal Reserve Bank of New York
• Details how an understanding of risk built AIG, but a disdainfor government regulators led to a run-in with New York StateAttorney General Eliot Spitzer

Fatal Risk is the comprehensive and compelling true storyof the company at the center of the financial storm and how itnearly caused the entire economic system to collapse.

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Informazioni sull'autore

Roddy Boyd is an investigative reporter who has been uncovering financial market shenanigans for more than a decade. Most recently at Fortune magazine, he also worked at the New York Post's business desk, the New York Sun and Institutional Investor News, and has written for Slate's "The Big Money." In addition to founding the financial investigative reporting website TheFinancialInvestigator.com, he has worked on both the buy- and sell-sides of Wall Street.

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Praise for Fatal Risk

"Not surprisingly given his reporting chops, Roddy Boyd haswritten in Fatal Risk a seminal account of how AIGwillfully—and irresponsibly—came to insure much of therisk in the financial world in the first decade of the twenty-firstcentury. Fatal Risk is must reading for anyone who wants tobe entertained and to understand."
—William D. Cohan, author, Money and Power: HowGoldman Sachs Came to Rule the World and House of Cards

"Read this book if you want to know how one of the world'slargest companies played with risk and got burned."
—Charles Gasparino, anchor, Fox BusinessNetwork

"Fatal Risk is as in-depth as any autopsy of AIG willever be."
—Felix Salmon, columnist, Reuters.com

"Woody Allen once said that his idea of pure Hell was to beburied alive with a life insurance salesman. But for the rest ofus, pure Hell almost became being buried alive by the biggestinsurance firm on earth. Here's the final reckoning of how thathappened, when a bunch of little snowballs started rolling downhilluntil they gathered themselves together into the biggest insuranceconglomerate avalanche on earth: AIG. Roddy Boyd has made this talemust reading for every member of every finance committee inCongress; at least they'd learn how the people of Wall Streetreally think."
—Christopher Byron, author, Martha Inc.

The inside story of the company at the center of thefinancial maelstrom and how it brought down the entire economicsystem

Written by star investigative reporter Roddy Boyd, FatalRisk is the first book to tell the complete story of AIG'spivotal role in the 2008 financial crisis. Relying on insiderinformation available to no other reporter—including thepersonal notes and records of key players—he takes you behindthe scenes at AIG, Goldman Sachs, and the New York Fed, to shine alight on how the company was run, how the same qualities that madeit a global insurance and financial giant led to its downfall, and,ultimately, how its collapse nearly brought about the unraveling ofthe world financial system.

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"As author of Fatal Risk . . . I would have found my jobmuch easier if Goldman truly were the real culprit in thissaga."
[from "AIG and Goldman Sachs: The Deceptive Blame Game," appearingon TheFinancialInvestigator.com, July 2010]

There certainly has been no dearth of reporting on the causes ofthe 2008 financial meltdown. Thousands of gallons of ink have beenspilled decrying the gross incompetence, if not downrightcriminality, of mortgage lenders, the wildly excessive risk-takingof Wall Street banks, the cravenness and collusion of the ratingsagencies, and the willful ignorance of regulators. Yet absent fromthe orgy of righteous finger-pointing has been any substantivecoverage of AIG, the looming giant in the eye of thetempest—the one company about which it can truly be saidthat, if it had been allowed to collapse, it would have dragged theentire world financial system down with it.

Fatal Risk is the riveting inside account of how Maurice"Hank" Greenberg, the storied combat veteran and drivenentrepreneur, took a motley collection of insurance companies andbuilt them into the world's most innovative and daring financialconglomerate. Made rich and powerful through Greenberg's iron willand vision, AIG was unprepared for his dramatic ouster in 2005. Asthe company recovered from a bruising regulatory battle, itsmanagement did not understand what risks were being taken onto itsonce mighty balance sheet in the name of a quick buck. As the CDOand real estate markets imploded, AIG's role as the indispensablegiant at the corner of Main Street and Wall Street nearly broughtdown the world financial system.

Perhaps most controversially, investigative reporter Roddy Boydargues that, contrary to conventional wisdom, Goldman Sachs, andthe billions in collateral calls it made on AIG's FinancialProducts unit, was not the sole cause of the company's downfall.Drawing upon a host of sources—from Hank Greenberg to seniorGoldman executives; current and former AIG leaders and boardmembers; to legendary short-seller Jim Chanos and Federal Reserveofficials—Boyd makes a compelling case that AIG's collapsewas an inside job. It took several generations of tireless work andmeasured risk-taking to build AIG into a AAA-rated juggernaut, butit took only a few years of profit and bonus chasing from a handfulof previously unknown executives to bring the world's mostimportant company to its knees.

A cautionary tale of corporate hubris and the enthralling,never-before-told story of how an insurance company became acentral player in the global financial meltdown, Fatal Risk is mustreading for market insiders, investors, business leaders, andanyone who's wondered what really happened in 2008.

Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: Wiley
• Data di pubblicazione: 2011
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0470889802
• ISBN 13: 9780470889800
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 368
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile