Den of Thieves

Product Information

This book is about the loss of household names such as Carnation, Beatrice, General foods, and Diamond Shamrock that vanished in takeovers that spawned criminal activity and violations of the securities laws.

It is impressive that the SEC ran with the story to the end, but very scary that they needed the tip to get things started. And if you've read Michael Lewis' The Big Short, his account of a much more complex series of events is actually a little easier to follow than this book. An absolutely outstanding look at the '80s Wall Street culture and the inside operations of Michael R.Stewart makes their activities as clear as possible, explaining how the seemingly benign sweetheart deals the bankers arranged for each other fit into their larger plans. I have mixed feelings about Den of Thieves, the 1992 Pulitzer winning book about the largest insider trading scheme Wall Street ever suffered. I like the introductions on how the major investment houses started, and the roles of the Investment bankers, traders, lawyers, arbitragers etc. Less worthy were his arbitrageur counterparts Dennis Levine and Marty Siegel, or his partner Ivan Boesky, who ended up inspiring much of the Gordon Gekko character in the movie Wall Street. This book lays out all of the insider trading securities laws violations that were so prevalent in the 1980's.

Stewart, a reporter and editor at the Wall Street Journal while Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken and company plundered millions from junk bonds and selling secrets of financial transactions during the Decade of Greed — this is just limited to the 1980s? For Levine, the experience only reinforced his view that without extraordinary measures, he was never going to realize his grand ambitions. One feature of the book I really appreciated was that it spent a great deal of time discussing the prosecutorial strategies of the SEC and the US attorney's office, then headed by a pre-mayoral Rudy Giuliani. A helpful and/or enlightening book that is extremely well rounded, has many strengths and no shortcomings worth mentioning.What I found most striking was the arrogance of the principals, the steadfast self justification - not only would they refute any wrongdoing in their minds they were heroes, and finally how the criminal behaviour was so richly rewarded even post persecution. Levine, a Baruch College graduate from Queens whose dream it was simply to beat the system any way he could. He begins by introducing his four main players in such lively circumstances that they jump off the page. Rudy Guliani's office prosecutes this case in the public eye while he positions himself to run for Mayor of NYC.