preview

William David Coh An American Business Writer Essay

Good Essays

About the author:
William David Cohan is an American business writer. He has written three books about business and economics and is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Prior to becoming a journalist, he worked on Wall Street for seventeen years. He spent six years at Lazard Frères in New York, then Merrill Lynch & Co., and later became a managing director at JP Morgan Chase. He also worked for two years at GE Capital. Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University School of Journalism, and Columbia University Graduate School of Business. (Source: Wikipedia.org)

House of Cards describes in particular the complicated series of events that led to the downfall of Bear Sterns in March 2008. Its actual appeal, however, deduces from its complete and careful analysis of the history of the firm since its origination as an upstart brokerage firm in 1923 and a gripping account of the demise of Bear Sterns in 2007. This failure prognosticated a lot of issues that would eventually stultify the firm, and the author puts forward that its deviation from various historical operating practices led to its ultimate sale to JPMorgan Chase at $10 per share, down from over $170 just a year earlier.

Cohan, also the author of “The Last Tycoons,” a 2007 book about Lazard Frères & Company, gives us in this book a shuddery, almost microscopic account of the 10, vertigo inducing days that disclosed Bear Stearns to be a fragile house of cards in a perfect storm.

Why I choose this book?

Get Access