The Accidental Investment Banker: Inside the Decade That Transformed Wall Street |  | Author: Jonathan A. Knee
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Category: Book
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Rating:  43 reviews
Sales Rank: 381,721
Media: Paperback
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.7 x 0.8
ISBN: 0812978048
Dewey Decimal Number: 332.660973
EAN: 9780812978049
ASIN: 0812978048
Publication Date: July 31, 2007
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Product Description
Investment bankers used to be known as respectful of their clients, loyal to their firms, and chary of the financial system that allowed them to prosper. What happened? From his prestigious Wall Street perches at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, Jonathan A. Knee witnessed firsthand the lavish deal-making of the freewheeling nineties, when bankers rode the wave of the Internet economy, often by devil-may-care means. By the turn of the twenty-first century, the bubble burst and the industry was in free fall. Told with biting humor and unflinching honesty, populated with power players, back-stabbers, and gazillionaires, The Accidental Investment Banker is Kneeâs exhilarating insiderâs account of this boom-and-bust anything-goes era, when fortunes were made and reputations were lost.
âA rare, ringside seat inside the madcap and often egomaniacal world of Wall Streetâs Masters of the Universe . . . For would-be bankers, the book is an excellent primer on what itâs really like; for current bankers it will be a guilty pleasure.â
âThe New York Times
âFinally we have someone willing to lift the curtain. . . . With refreshing candor and engaging prose, [this book] takes us inside the world of investment banking.â
âJames B. Stewart, author of Den of Thieves and DisneyWar
â[Knee] captures the glories and agonies of his profession. General readers will marvel.â
âThe Wall Street Journal
âEntertainingly indiscreet . . . Kneeâs talent for wicked pen portraits is put to good use.â
âFinancial Times
âFor anyone who remembers the crazy boom times, and the even crazier bust, Jonathan A. Kneeâs The Accidental Investment Banker is a must. This tell-all chronicles Kneeâs time at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, revealing a world that rivals 24 in intrigue and drama.â
âFortune
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 43
 Very True, Very Real September 10, 2006
Sheryl Katz (Chatsworth, CA USA)
65 out of 68 found this review helpful
I could really relate to this book. Up until four months ago, for the previous seven years, I was the General Counsel of a medium sized publishing company. Our company was backed by Private Equity, and a large part of my role was mergers and acquisitions. During that time I interacted with more investment bankers, bankers, and money fund managers than I could possibly remember. Prior to that I worked for a couple of years in the M&A group of a Fortune 500 publishing company, and prior to that I spent 20 years in government and large law firms.
I have never personally met Jonathan Knee, at least not that I remember, but my company danced and flirted several times with his current company. I knew people at pretty much every boutique publishing investment bank in New York. So, while I didn't work as an insider at an investment banking firm, I've been as close as you can get. And this books is absolutely dead on accurate both in its historical perspective as well as its view of what life is like inside the investment banking industry.
Knee comes across as somewhat conflicted. He obviously likes the money and maybe the prestige of investment banking, but he knows that investment banking has a side that is ugly and corrupt. He wants to continue in the industry, but he also wants to expose its faults. As a consequence sometimes the book waffles. For example, he criticizes Mary Meeker and defends her at the same time. He clearly does not want to burn any bridges.
He accurately captures the sense of power and feeling of doing something important that comes from investment banking. In particular the satisfaction of advising CEOs and seeing ones advice taken. Based on my own experience, in the world as it is today, the feeling of doing something important can be much more tangible when working with big business than working in the government as he notes.
Still, he longs for a different time when relationship investment banking was the heart of the business. I have the sense that if one were really to talk with him heart to heart that his awareness of the corruption runs deeper than he is willing to fully disclose in this book. In part I think this is the reason some of the reviewers here were disappointed with the book. However, I also think the palpably conflicted nature of his feelings ultimately makes this book more interesting, if less of a simple entertainment.
If you are looking for a rollicking but superficial account of the investment banking world, along the lines of Liar's Poker, this is not the book. If you are looking for a deep historical analysis of the growth of investment banking, along the lines of something written by Ron Chernow, this is not the book. But as a thoughtful insiders account with good historical perspective, this is an excellent book
Wall Street Spectator August 30, 2006
Wall St. spectator (USA)
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
The Accidental Investment Banker (the "AIB") has been compared with Liar's Poker, and surely readers who enjoyed the latter will also enjoy the AIB. But in some respects the comparison is unfair to the AIB, because as it is not only a quick and amusing story of Wall St in the '90s, but a serious analysis of a transformative decade in investment banking. As an attorney who participated in the process on the periphery, I can testify that Knee understands the key economic, business and regulatory trends and knows the"trophy" bankers who shaped decade, and the culture of their firms. The AIB is a great read for anyone on the Street (or in the "City," for that matter), anyone in the "codependent" professions (lawyers and consultants), MBA candidates and those contemplating it, and anyone who enjoys Wall St. as a spectator sport.
Excellent I-banking stories March 13, 2007
Bayview (Plano, TX USA)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
This book describes the personal journey the author had gone through during his decade in investment banking. He talks about what's involved in investment banking, office politics, the incentives that drive the hehavior of the bankers, dynamics of the competitive landscape the clients. He also quotes or put in a nontrivial amount of material that he did not experience first hand, in order to provide the background or history of stories or issues he's talking about. The author is quite candid, albeit with a trace of hidden bragging of his smarts and achivements.
I have read "Monkey Business", "Liar's Poker" and "Goldman Sachs : The Culture of Success". Each book has its own strength. The strength of this book is description of politics, dynamics of the relationship between investment bankers and their clients.
As writing style, this book is easy to follow, a pleasure to read. In a way, it reads like a story, keeps you wanting to find out what happended next. However, it is relative slow to go through this book, as least for me, because the book is actually quite dense.
An Insider's Look at I-Banking History August 20, 2006
Investment Banker (New York, NY)
11 out of 13 found this review helpful
Jonathan Knee's book provides an insider's look at the wild ride that was investment banking in the internet boom and then bust. For anyone who lived through this era, the book provides an enjoyable and realistic trip down memory lane with enough fun anecdotes and keen observations to keep you laughing. More importantly, though, the book gives a sense for history and makes a compelling argument about what has changed in investment banking and why. Regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with Knee's thesis, this is one topic worth debating and Knee does an artful job of blending history and conversational story-telling, sprinkled with entertaining personalities. Easy enough to understand for someone outside the industry while sophisticated enough for someone inside, the book is an enjoyable and worthwhile read.
Eye opening if you have no background in the space January 19, 2007
Andrew Boer (Greenwich CT)
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
When I was eight or so, we moved from Houston TX to Greenwich CT. My Dad was a scientist, but many of my classmates had names like Greenhill or Biggs -- apparently they did something odd for living called "Investment Banking". I had never heard of Investment Banking (sounded kind of stodgy and boring) but I remember that nonetheless I came home from school in third grade and announced that I wanted to be an Investment Banker (which sounded pretty cool, although not quite as cool as "Headhunters", which I had learned a little about from Gilligan's Island -- spears, grass skirts, and the like.) At any rate, I had no idea at the time what Investment Bankers actually did, but I assumed I would eventually figure it out.
I didn't.
Here's what I knew: They worked long hours. They made lots of money. They did M&A and IPO's, and occasionally financed companies. A lot of them hated it. But I had no idea how they actually spent their day -- and I was curious -- was investment banking something that I would have been good at? (If I had majored in Economics instead of English?)
The Accidental Investment Banker is a great introduction to the profession -- I didn't realize that i-banking is, at the top, a sales job (not unlike law and consulting). But of course like all of those other jobs, you have to slog some really hard and pointless hours to get there: creating "blue books" for clients. Which sounds to me like writing "decks" for consultants, and "briefs" for lawyers. Lots of work that really has fairly few real ideas, but justifies big price tags, and by all means has to look "professional".
I also didn't realize that the bonuses were basically fixed in a range by class. I had always assumed a commission based compensation system.
Anyway, Knee's book is terrific, even if you already know what bankers do, because you get an inside look and comparison between Morgan Stanley and Goldman in the 90's. He thinks banking as a profession has gotten too big and has lost its way/values, but its hard to think of any major business/industry that criticism doesn't apply to ("the kids these days"). This is a great place to start if you are interested in the subject; next I will check out some of these other histories that he has cited extensively, namely House of Morgan by Chernow, and Goldman by Lisa Endlich.
I would add that it becomes clear that like say Michael Wolff (who wrote Burn Rate and has a similar style) that Mr. Knee is probably somewhat of an unreliable narrator and potentially a polarizing figure in person (you get a strong whiff of this from hints like his unapologetically messy office, or the mere fact he is willing to write a tell-all book)...but like Mr. Wolff he wears that more or less on his sleeve, so I don't have a problem with the fact that the narrative is unreliable. It is more fun to read between the lines.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 43
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