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Title details for The Partnership by Charles D. Ellis - Available

The Partnership

The Making of Goldman Sachs

by Charles D. Ellis
Norman Dietz
Audiobook
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Goldman Sachs is the most profitable and powerful investment bank in the world today. Fifty years ago, it was a marginal family firm with limited prospects. How did it ascend to leadership in Europe, Asia, North and South America; make many, many partners fabulous fortunes; and become the leader in IPOs, M&A, FX, bond dealing, stock brokerage, derivatives, hedge funds, private equity, and real estate?


As a strategy consultant to Goldman Sachs for more than thirty years, Charles D. Ellis developed close relationships with many of the firm's past and present leaders around the world. In The Partnership he probes deeply into the most important chapters in the firm's history, revealing the key events and decisions that tell the colorful, character-driven story of how Goldman Sachs became what it is today.


Ellis tells the illuminating stories of the great personalities who sowed the seeds of Goldman Sachs's success: from Sidney Weinberg, a junior high school dropout with a flair for markets; to Gus Levy, who brought a ferocious intensity to every minute of every workday; to John Whitehead, who wrote the core values that defined a culture of teamwork in serving clients; to the unpretentious John Weinberg, who was the quintessential relationship banker of his era; to Robert Rubin and Hank Paulson, who both became secretary of the treasury; to Governor Jon Corzine; and finally to Lloyd Blankfein, current CEO and chairman of Goldman Sachs.


Starting as a sole proprietorship dealing in commercial paper in the mid-nineteenth century, Goldman Sachs became an innovative underwriter, struggled to survive the crash and Depression, and came out of World War II to complete what was then the single most important transaction in Wall Street's history: Ford Motor Company's IPO. Goldman Sachs overcame a full set of dramatic perils: Penn Central's bankruptcy, Robert Maxwell's abusive frauds, and insider trading scandals. Ellis demonstrates how the firm's core values, intensive recruiting, entrepreneurial creativity, and disciplined risk taking—incorporating technology and hard work—laid the foundations, multiplied the firm's resources and profits, and magnified its power until it became today's Goldman Sachs: one of the most successful business organizations in the world.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    December 22, 2008

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781400190492
      • File size: 951822 KB
      • Duration: 33:02:57

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      THE PARTNERSHIP, a corporate history of Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street investment firm, adopts an unrelentingly glowing, even fawning, tone. Norman Dietz matches it with a reading that seems to add "How wonderful!" to every statement--even when the company finds itself in financial trouble. While Dietz's upbeat take is fitting, both book and listeners might have been better served by a drier tone. Still, his ability to bring expressive enthusiasm to over 30 hours of sometimes-numbing detail is remarkable. Dietz even makes vivid a list of names in the acknowledgments. But despite his yeoman's job of heartfelt narration, those outside the industry may find the book's detail dull, its frequent use of unexplained technical terms confusing, and its tone off-putting. W.M. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      August 18, 2008
      In this history of investment bank Goldman Sachs, Ellis (Winning the Loser's Game
      ) covers the same ground as Lisa Endlich's Goldman Sachs: The Culture of Success
      —with notable stylistic differences. From Marcus Goldman's purchase of his first commercial paper in 1869 to the firm's current success, Ellis's account is lively and engaging where Endlich's is accurate but dry. Ellis sheds light on events through dialogue and detailed descriptions of people's thoughts and feelings, embellishments that the author terms “recreations” in his epilogue. The effect of infusing such narrative techniques into the history of Goldman Sachs is entertaining, but it pushes the envelope of nonfiction, especially since the author appears to have interviewed only former partners of the firm. More damagingly, Ellis fails to report much about actual business, and attempts to do so—such as a chapter on Rockefeller Center financing—require lengthy digressions and are incomprehensible due to the complexities of the transactions. Without links to business, boardroom conflicts take on the air of petty squabbles. More a composite memoir of senior Goldman partners than a traditional history, this book will satisfy readers curious about the philosophies and personalities of the firm.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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