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The Last Tycoons
The Last Tycoons
Oct 7, 2024 10:19 AM

Author:William D. Cohan

The Last Tycoons

They amassed unimaginable fortunes and would stop at nothing to make a deal, until their titanic egos started to jeopardize everything. This is the astonishing story of Lazard Frères, the world’s most elite and legendary investment bank – and the men who reigned over it all.

For over 150 years Lazard Frères had stood apart from other Wall Street firms by offering ultra-wealthy clients the wisdom of its ‘Great Men’: from Felix Rohatyn, the escapee from Nazi-occupied France turned financial genius, to Michel David-Weill, the inscrutable French billionaire ‘Sun King’; from Steve Rattner, the boy wonder from Long Island who clashed violently with the old guard, to larger-than-life CEO Bruce Wasserstein, ‘Bid-Em-Up Bruce’, who broke with the bank’s traditions and made himself billions in the process.

In The Last Tycoons William Cohan, himself a former high-level Wall Street banker, takes us into their mysterious and secretive world, telling a story of ruthless ambition, whispered advice, explosive feuds, glamorous mistresses, decadent excesses and unimaginable wealth.

Reviews

Riveting … a genuine page-turner

—— Will Hutton

Spellbinding

—— Financial Times

A definitive account … it lives up to the billing

—— The Times

Has sent a jolt through Lazard and the rest of Wall Street

—— Wall Street Journal

An epic

—— The New York Times

The man known as "Dr Doom" has been hailed as a prophet

—— Financial Times

The only professional economist who really predicted the crisis, and perhaps the only independent thinker in that business

—— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Odell argues convincingly that our daily experience is dominated by the corporate clock that so many of us contort ourselves to fit inside

—— Irish Independent

The best beach read of the year ... Read it, and then think deeply about how you are reading your own time

—— The Media Leader

Odell's latest book, Saving Time, is great at analysing where a lot of our notions about how to use our time came from (hint: capitalism).

—— RTE Ireland

One of President Barack Obama's 'Favourite books of 2019'

—— President Barack Obama on How To Do Nothing

[a] fascinating and timely history

—— Ian Pindar , Guardian

Incredibly vivid

—— Press Association

I've read lots of books about economics this last year. This is one of the very best... Superb

—— Standard

A fluent and indirect paean to Keynesian economics... this resonates with the contemporary turmoil in global financial markets

—— Financial Times

Ahamed unravels the story of the most terrible financial collapse in history from the perspective of the four men who were largely responsible: the leading central bankers in the United States, Britain, France and Germany

—— Mail on Sunday

[a] very readable portrait of the bankers who allowed the Great Depression to happen

—— Telegraph

Possibly the most important political book that I have read since The Spirit Level

—— Stuart Weir, co-founder of Charter 88, former editor of the New Statesman

He has prised the lid off an important and terrifying can of worms

—— Martin Vander Weyer , Literary Review

Lively and well written book

—— Toby Young , Mail on Sunday

A welcome account of how the sun is never allowed to set on the British empire's old islands, whose fiscal pirates hoard the tax-free treasures of the rich

—— Geoffrey Robertson , New Statesman, Books of the Year

Shaxson delves into capitalism's secret nooks and tells us about how a culture of secrecy can perpetuate itself. Very interesting

—— William Leith , Evening Standard

A compelling read [...] an important and very much a live topic, it'll take you a few hours to read the book but it will be a worthwhile investment of time

—— Peter Magee , Bookbag

What makes this such a good read for the layman is that the author employs all his journalistic skill (he used to work at Reuters) to illustrate his arguments and uses real examples to real examples to illustrate complex issues

—— John Arlidge , Sunday Times

This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the world we live in

—— Brian Maye , Irish Times

This engrossing book about the offshore banking racket, with its eye-opening scrutiny of tax havens and the suited scoundrels who profit from them, will make you think again about the murkier side of the City...This first-rate forensic work ends with a plea that the closed City "must be abolished and submerged into a...fully democratic London"

—— Boyd Tonkin , Independent

[An] informed polemic against finance capital

—— Oliver Kamm , The Times

Now more than a decade old, this is still the best introduction to the world of tax havens

—— Economist, *Summer Reads of 2022*
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