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Crash of the Titans: Greed, Hubris, the Fall of Merrill Lynch, and the Near-Collapse of Bank of America Hardcover – Deckle Edge, November 2, 2010

by Greg Farrell (Author)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 444 ratings
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The intimate, fly-on-the wall tale of the decline and fall of an America icon
 
With one notable exception, the firms that make up what we know as Wall Street have always been part of an inbred, insular culture that most people only vaguely understand. The exception was Merrill Lynch, a firm that revolutionized the stock market by bringing Wall Street to Main Street, setting up offices in far-flung cities and towns long ignored by the giants of finance. With its “thundering herd” of financial advisers, perhaps no other business, whether in financial services or elsewhere, so epitomized the American spirit. Merrill Lynch was not only “bullish on America,” it was a big reason why so many average Americans were able to grow wealthy by investing in the stock market. 

Merrill Lynch was an icon. Its sudden decline, collapse, and sale to Bank of America was a shock. How did it happen? Why did it happen? And what does this story of greed, hubris, and incompetence tell us about the culture of Wall Street that continues to this day even though it came close to destroying the American economy? A culture in which the CEO of a firm losing $28 billion pushes hard to be paid a $25 million bonus. A culture in which two Merrill Lynch executives are guaranteed bonuses of $30 million and $40 million for four months’ work, even while the firm is struggling to reduce its losses by firing thousands of employees.

Based on unparalleled sources at both Merrill Lynch and Bank of America, Greg Farrell’s Crash of the Titans is a Shakespearean saga of three flawed masters of the universe. E. Stanley O’Neal, whose inspiring rise from the segregated South to the corner office of Merrill Lynch—where he engineered a successful turnaround—was undone by his belief that a smooth-talking salesman could handle one of the most difficult jobs on Wall Street. Because he enjoyed O’Neal’s support, this executive was allowed to build up an astonishing $30 billion position in CDOs on the firm’s balance sheet, at a time when all other Wall Street firms were desperately trying to exit the business. After O’Neal comes John Thain,the cerebral, MIT-educated technocrat whose rescue of the New York Stock Exchange earned him the nickname “Super Thain.” He was hired to save Merrill Lynch in late 2007, but his belief that the markets would rebound led him to underestimate the depth of Merrill’s problems. Finally, we meet Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis, a street fighter raised barely above the poverty line in rural Georgia, whose “my way or the highway” management style suffers fools more easily than potential rivals, and who made a $50 billion commitment over a September weekend to buy a business he really didn’t understand, thus jeopardizing his own institution. 

The merger itself turns out to be a bizarre combination of cultures that blend like oil and water, where slick Wall Street bankers suddenly find themselves reporting to a cast of characters straight out of the Beverly Hillbillies. BofA’s inbred culture, which perceived New York banks its enemies, was based on loyalty and a good-ol’-boy network in which competence played second fiddle to blind obedience.

Crash of the Titans is a financial thriller that puts you in the theater as the historic events of the financial crisis unfold and people responsible for billion of dollars of other people’s money gamble recklessly to enhance their power and their paychecks or to save their own skins. Its wealth of never-before-revealed information and focus on two icons of corporate America make it the book that puts together all the pieces of the Wall Street disaster.
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  1. Print length
    480 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Crown Business
  4. Publication date
    November 2, 2010
  5. Dimensions
    6.6 x 1.74 x 9.54 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0307717860
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0307717863
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Eminently readable and convincing...There's great value to be gained in the detail that Farrell reveals." —Salon
 
"An exhaustive reconstruction of how Merrill Lynch & Co. sealed its own fate by
becoming more bullish on bonuses than on America." —James Pressley, Bloomberg
                                                                                                                        
"Farrell weaves his facts into a story...piling detail upon detail to sketch the inner
workings of Merrill Lynch, which he calls the Wall Street firm that made it possible for
average Americans to reap handsome returns in the stock market." —USA Today
 
"The...financial crisis's answer to Game Change--John Heilemann and Mark Halperin's
tattle-filled bestseller about the 2008 Presidential election--Farrell shows that... seemingly trivial matters became the obsessions of Wall Street executives as the subprime contagion spread." —BusinessWeek
 
“Immaculately reported…Farrell has found one of the biggest untold stories of the [financial crisis] drama.” —Financial Times
 
“Farrell tells a story based on hundreds of hours of interviews that builds like a hurricane.” —Forbes.com

About the Author

GREG FARRELL is a correspondent for the Financial Times. In January 2009, he broke the news that Merrill Lynch had paid out its 2008 bonuses a month ahead of schedule, in December, even though Merrill was in the process of losing $28 billion for the year, and Bank of America needed an extra $20 billion in taxpayer funds to complete its acquisition of the firm. That story sparked an investigation by New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo. Greg is a past winner of the American Business Press’s Jesse Neal Award for investigative reporting and a recipient of the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship for business journalism. He earned a BA from Harvard University and an MBA from the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Crown Business; First Edition (November 2, 2010)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 480 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0307717860
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0307717863
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.8 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.6 x 1.74 x 9.54 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 444 ratings

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Greg Farrell

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Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
444 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Bill Dahl
5.0 out of 5 stars An Absolutely Magnificent Story
Reviewed in the United States on December 12, 2010
Verified Purchase
An absolutely magnificent story.

It's a tough position for another book on the U.S. financial crisis to be released on November 2, 2010 (Crown Business NY, NY) --- if you have read as many great books about the crisis this year as I have.

Don't be fooled. Don't let the 454 pages of this volume dissuade you from considering this magnificent story from Greg Farrell (correspondent for the Financial Times - BA Harvard and MBA from Columbia).

What Crash of the Titans is, in my opinion, is evidence of simply phenomenal storytelling, supported by a depth and breadth of investigative journalism that is both unique and unparalleled. Farrell is a pro - truly a master story teller. The 454 pages flew by based upon the prowess of Farrell's ability to keep the reader engaged on a page-turning journey. His character development is amazing. The tension, innuendo and intrigue are simply fantastic and lend to the credibility of this work as a truly unique, non-fiction financial thriller for 2010.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I worked at both NationsBank and BofA during my career as a regional manager of a commercial lending group (during the years when BofA was acquired by NB and adopted the Bank of America brand). I was with NB at the time of the acquisition and stayed on for several years thereafter with the BofA logo on my business card. Farrell's ability to capture the "culture clash" that occurred during this merger was uncanny - spot on target.

This book is, in my opinion, an eminently fair characterization of the story and the people. Frankly, John Thain did his best - and his performance could not likely be outperformed by comparably capable Wall Street executives who may have been thrust into the situation Mr. Thain was.

Greg Fleming - wherever you are - you are my hero! I'll work for your team any day. I'm waiting for your call Mr. Fleming.

From the sheer excellence of the story telling, supported by the research and investigative journalism...I rate this work as FIVE STARS.

Buy it. You'll truly enjoy it. This book ranks right up there with the works of Lowenstein, Michael Lewis and Scott Patterson's published in 2010.
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4.0 out of 5 stars Please make sure we don't forget what O'Neal did!
Reviewed in the United States on February 13, 2011
Verified Purchase
So how to review a book with absolutely no redeeming characters? Where the only ones that look remotely ok were only such because they talked to the writer more than the others.

The book itself is a worthy history of Merrill Lynch's last 18 months as independent company and it's rocky merger with Bank of America. It shows the management to be self-centered, myopic and completely incompetent. Amazingly everyone gets out alive. Stan O'Neil gets $160mm. John Thain is the CEO of CIT. Greg Flemming is one of the top executives at Morgan Stanley. Bob McCann similarly positioned at UBS. Ahmass Fakahany the former head of Risk and Co-President is now a NY restauranteur. Even the chief culprit Osman Semerci seems to be the CEO of a $2 billion Hedge Fund in London (Duet). Savings are wiped out. Thousands and thousands of people lose jobs and houses and strangely those at the center of the storm are doing just fine.

The book is a page turner. There are moments of real drama. The firm, the banking business and the economy are all sinking. The key subjects at Merrill and BoA are well profiled. The conflicts and live timeline given a "novel" feel to the storyline. At certain points it feels oddly distant from the events of the day. For example it barely discusses the spring of 2008 which was a time of huge uncertainty. Instead of telling us again how certain people felt I think he could have tied more of what was going on around Merrill at that time. But still good pace throughout.

The book lacks technical detail. Other reviewers have mentioned this. Given it's now 2011 there are probably enough books explaining the "what" of the crisis where perhaps this is the "who". But I'd say this suffers a bit as a result. In talking about Merrill's losses in the fall of 2008 there is scant detail on how it happened and yet this was the biggest loss by far - $18 billion and the CDO positions had already been sold. Michael Lewis showed in "The Big Short" that you can still write a great book and include some good details on what are the investments that when wrong without boring people.

I thought the writer was also a bit soft on Thain. They talked about his expert handling of the LTCM wind down from 1998 but there are famous stories of Goldman front running that unwind from months before that fund crashed. Wouldn't it put Thain's character in a different light to be more skeptical of his role? I would also doubt that he was the key driver of Goldman's mortgage trading in the 1980's.

Secondly he seems overly sympathetic to Greg Fleming. On at least a dozen occasions he talks about the 15 or 16 years that Flemming has put into the firm only to see it blow up. Come on. 16 years is not that long. Mentioning it once or twice is ok but it is not a badge or a special amount of time, particularly when you're making unbelievable amounts of money. Please remember everyone is in it for the money.

His descriptions of Bank of America culture were fascinating. Clearly they had an inferiority complex overlayed with enormous bravado; seeing themselves as outside the New York banking scene and resentful of being seen as less sophisticated being based in Charlotte, North Carolina. They are not a bad bank by any means but clearly different from their major competitors. Given that Countrywide really buried that bank Farrell could have spent some time on it. It really was the Achilles heel that ruined Lewis' career. Ken Lewis probably could have survived the losses and ugly politics on closing the Merrill acquisition if his own bank were in better shape.

In the end, this is a good book about the failure of Merrill Lynch and of how bad Stan O'Neil screwed up (repeatedly). There were colossal errors in judgement and a shocking misunderstanding of risk management. Risk management is 50% systems (which Merrill clearly did not have) and 50% honest dialogues with qualified practitioners which also did not exist. HOPEFULLY something is learned from it. If nothing else O'Neil should be kicked to the curb and stepped on (repeatedly).
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Top reviews from other countries

Robert G McPherson
5.0 out of 5 stars Both interesting and upsetting, but a terrific read!
Reviewed in Canada on June 7, 2019
Verified Purchase
I have a pretty comprehensive library concerning the 2008 Wall Street crash, but this book contains one of the best portrayals of hubris, stupidity and greed that I have ever read. John Thain's avarice has to be among the most egregious of all. It's really difficult to believe that after presiding over near absolute disaster, he still believed that someone owed him an income in the tens of millions, the darkest possible side of the American dream.
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DOPPLEGANGER
5.0 out of 5 stars INCOMPETENCY REWARDED WITH VAST RICHES
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 1, 2010
Verified Purchase
Until the many recent revelations on the causes of our financial institutions almost total capitulation when faced with difficult trading conditions, many, including myself, held those running these businesses in great respect bordering on awe, believing them to be superior to most other mortals. This conviction was reinforced by the fact that they were paid large basic salaries, were given huge annual bonuses almost as a matter of course, had pension funds of unimaginative magnitude, and were beneficiaries of a multitude of perks from chauffeured limousines, almost limitless expenses through to personal use of corporate aircraft. If these people were not outstanding business leaders surely the supposedly 'wise' members of the Remuneration Committees of these companies would not be irresponsible enough to rewards them so extravagantly?

Wrong. It is quite evident from this outstanding book on the last desperate efforts of Merrill Lynch to avoid the ignominy of 'going down the tube' and the ill-conceived and clumsy efforts of The Bank of America when buying what was considered to be a 'trophy purchase' without exercising much care and due diligence, at a price that was at a considerable premium over its real value, that the senior executives of both companies were 'thrashing' around in the dark, displaying all the signs of 'lemming' management and not living up to the level of expertise that they were being paid for.

Greg Farrell's account of these manic times is excellent. Although fairly long in terms of pages, it holds ones interest throughout and gives both the uninitiated and more financially experienced reader, a 'fly-on-the-wall' perspective into the dire repercussions of banks operating 'casino' type operations on their own accounts, and throwing the dice on the 'Credit Derivatives' Table especially as it transpires they had little or no appreciation of the risks involved.

The 'players' in this shambolic commercial farce, like Zero Mostel in 'The Producers', might well ask the question "Where did we go right?" to which the resounding response would be "Nowhere!".

A really good book which I believe is Mr Farrell's first and it is hoped not his last.
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4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 20, 2017
Verified Purchase
Really good summary of Bank of America's acquisition of Merrill Lynch
One person found this helpful
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Fred Bouwman
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in Canada on November 7, 2015
Verified Purchase
Excellent and detailed research and a real page turner.
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Reader
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 2, 2017
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excellent value and service from this seller
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