The Death of the Banker: The Decline and Fall of the Great Financial Dynasties and the Triumph of the Sma LL Investor - Softcover

Chernow, Ron

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0375700374 ISBN 13: 9780375700378

Publisher: Vintage, 1997

Synopsis

Ron Chernow examines the forces that made dynasties like the Morgans, the Warburgs, and the Rothschilds the financial arbiters of the early twentieth century and then rendered them virtually obsolete by the century's end. As he traces the shifting balance of power among investors, borrowers, and bankers, Chernow evokes both the grand theater of capital and the personal dramas of its most fascinating protagonists. Here is Siegmund Warburg, who dropped a client in the heat of a takeover deal because the man wore monogrammed shirt cuffs, as well as the imperious J. P. Morgan, who, when faced with a federal antitrust suit, admonished Theodore Roosevelt to "send your man to my man and they can fix it up." And here are the men who usurped their power, from the go-getters of the 1920s to the masters of the universe of the 1980s. Glittering with perception and anecdote, The Death of the Banker is at once a panorama of twentieth-century finance and a guide to the new era of giant mutual funds on Wall Street.

About this title

Book Description:

Winner of the American National Book Award, Ron Chernow expertly traces the decline of the big banks and the rise of small investors. (1997-02-12)

From the Back Cover:

'For the past decade, I have been intrigued by the conundrum of why the storied financial dynasties - the Rothschilds, Morgans, Barings, Warburgs et al. - flared so brilliantly at a certain historic juncture, then fell into eclipse. Why were their historic moments so spectacular but brief?...I take their demise as my starting-point for a panoramic survey of the world of high finance during the past two centruries. For all their majesty, the financial dynasties have been canaries in the coal mine, telling us much about unseen forces at work in the capital markets.' Ron Chernow, from The Death of the Banker

Ron Chernow - author of The House of Morgan and The Warburgs, and the winner of the American National Book Award - transports the reader on a fascinating tour of high finance. In a book packed with splendid anecdotes and lucid analyses, Chernow evokes the heady days when bankers sailed about in yachts as big as battleships, smoked cigars the size of small torpedoes and sparked bitter controvesy because of their sway over government and industry. He shows, too, how reformers mounted a spirited campaign to prize companies loose from their traditional bankers and restore competition to financial markets. In a world criss-crossed by capital flows, the banker will never again exercise such spectacular rule over clients. The mutual fund manager and the small investor have inherited the earth.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0375700374
• ISBN 13: 9780375700378
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 144