Finance Biography

In this audiobook, the author recalls his career and explores how to afford retiring while also coping with the existential crisis that so often goes along with leaving a job that's defined you. Drawing on his career and personal experiences preparing for retirement, he reveals how the prospect of retirement often requires us to find a new identity. Join the author as he rises up the ranks of banking and finance, helps people navigate financial challenges, and shares how to avoid the retirement-saving missteps and mistakes made by so many others in Gulag 401k.

Each year Americans lose billions of dollars to fraudulent activity. The Madoffs Among Us explains in graphic detail how and why people fall prey. Most importantly, it tells you how to easily identify the people who perpetrate these crimes and avoid their deceitful practices. Why do smart people fall for these cons? What are today’s most common scams? And how can you avoid becoming a victim?

Mike Daisey worked at Amazon.com for nearly two years during the dot-com frenzy of the late nineties. Now that his nondisclosure agreement has expired, he can tell the real story - one that blends tech culture, hero worship, cat litter, Albanian economics, and venture capitalism into a surreal cocktail of delusion.

Life was good for Jorge Newbery. A high school dropout and serial entrepreneur, he had built a real estate empire of over 4,000 apartments across the USA. Taking risks and working tirelessly were the ingredients to his rise. But, he took one risk too many. An ice storm on Christmas Eve 2004 triggered his collapse. He was maligned, publicly shamed, and financially gutted - even arrested. He lost everything and ended up $26 million in debt.

Revlon's C.E.O., financier Ronald O. Perelman is one of the richest men in America. Watched by the financial community with interest, Perelman has built a personal business empire worth an estimated $6 billion over the past 15 years. Linked to society's most dazzling beauties, Perelman owns palatial estates in Palm Beach, East Hampton, Manhattan, Sun Valley and Bel Air, as well as an impressive art collection, a fleet of automobiles and two G-4 jets.

Gary Rivlin tells the story of Ron Conway, the man who has placed more bets on Internet start-ups than anyone else in Silicon Valley. Conway is a listener-friendly way into the realm of angel financing, where independently wealthy investors link up with companies just as they are being born. The Godfather of Silicon Valley takes you into this fascinating world on the edges of the financial universe, where the pace is frantic, the story lines are rich, and every moment is perilous.

This is my autobiography. It's not a novel; it's my life story where I want to motivate and influence others. It shows lots of emotion, both highs and lows, how to succeed - it shows how I turned 37p into 100 million pounds. I have dyslexia and ADHD which is highlighted as you listen to the book. Due to this I often get sidetracked and have to go back to the original part of the story; again, this is highlighted.

The stories in this book are all true. Its author has been held up at gunpoint at night on a road in Guatemala and shot with a machine gun in the chest and shoulder in Vietnam. He's come close to dying of thirst in the Sahara and freezing to death in the Himalayas. He's contracted malaria and typhoid fever in Ethiopia and hepatitis in India. There have been accidents involving motorcycles and automobiles. He's had close calls involving lions (twice), elephants (three times) and a rhino (once).

Discretion, secrecy, and subtle strategy were the weapons of choice at Wall Street investment bank Lazard Frères & Co. For more than a century, the mystique and reputation of the "Great Men" who worked there allowed the firm to garner unimaginable profits, social cachet, and outsized influence in the halls of power. But in the mid-1980s, their titanic egos started getting in the way, and the Great Men of Lazard jeopardized all they had built.

Some extraordinary and unexpected factors are revealed in Taylor's fascinating new book that explains why some people become billionaires. Despite the fact that the sample of 17 self-made billionaires come from disparate backgrounds, work in different industries, have very different personalities, and superficially appear to have different upbringings, they have one important thing in common: they are all outsiders.

Hired by ForbesTraveler.com to review some of the most luxurious accommodations on Earth, and then inspired by a chance encounter in Dubai with the impoverished workers whose backbreaking jobs create such opulence, Bob Harris had an epiphany: He would turn his own good fortune into an effort to make lives like theirs better.

Leland Faust unmasks Wall Street's unsavory tactics in powerful detail by giving listeners a high-level view of how the financial services industry misleads them, overcharges them, and exposes them to needless risk. He documents the financial industry's alluring come-ons, airbrushed risks, high-stakes gambling, half-truths, misleading statements, outlandish predictions, tricks to overcharge customers, bad deals, and outright fraud by the most prominent and renowned of Wall Street's players.

In 2004, Argentina’s President, Nestor Kirchner, appointed Martín Redrado to lead their country’s Central Bank. It was the logical choice, considering that Harvard-educated and Wall Street-seasoned Redrado brought to the table an extensive knowledge of world economics. Redrado’s primary assignment as president was to provide monetary and financial stability to a country wrecked with cyclical breakups. In early 2010, Cristina Kirchner ordered the Central Bank to fund public spending and pay national debts. Martín Redrado refused.

In Ringside Stories, real estate guru Dick Corbett reveals the secrets to his success in business and in life, tracking the rough-and-ready life of a man who won't accept failure as an outcome. Setbacks large and small are taken as lessons for the future, and one small success leads to another, larger one until the dream achieved is grander than any restless youth could have imagined.

Here's a biographical profile of Henry J. Kaiser, a great industrialist and philanthropist who had a profound impact on America's ability to prevail in World War II. People tend to regard the great American titans of the past as robber barons, men who made their fortunes off the backs of the oppressed, flaunting laws and living like nabobs while others had to scratch for a living.

Catching Lightning in a Bottle traces the complete history of Merrill Lynch and the company's substantial impact on the world of finance, from the birth of the once-mighty company to its inauspicious end. Throughout its 94-year history, Merrill Lynch revolutionized finance by bringing Wall Street to Main Street, operating under a series of guidelines known as the Principles.

Bigger has turned out not to be better. Servicing the global economy has exacted a heavy toll in the erosion of our communities and the destruction of our environment. Increasingly, we are coming to realize that the way forward looks a lot like the way back — back to strong local economies, back to resilient, tight-knit communities, back to the land and work that is real. As we chart our course through these uncertain times, we are hungry for inspiration.

During Wall Street's last big bull market, there were brokers in $3,000 suits, billion-dollar IPO's, and 30-year-olds making $100,000 a month. And then there was Louis Pasciuto, who came from Staten Island at the age of 19 and discovered one indelible truth about himself: He was born to steal. This is the astounding, true story of the rise and fall of this fast-talking, street-smart wiseguy, as well as the insidious ways the Mob infiltrates, then controls, Wall Street.

Through the Fires is a triumphant comeback story in life and business. Robert Carr reflects on decades of struggle that took him to the brink of financial ruin at age 50. Carr would later make a fortune in the card payments industry only to lose almost everything in 2009 after one of the most devastating data breaches ever.

It was a time when anything seemed possible–instant wealth, glittering fame, fabulous luxury–and for a run of magical weeks in the spring and summer of 1920, Charles Ponzi made it all come true. Promising to double investors’ money in three months, the dapper, charming Ponzi raised the “rob Peter to pay Paul” scam to an art form and raked in millions at his office in downtown Boston. Ponzi’s Scheme is the amazing true story of the irresistible scoundrel who launched the most successful scheme of financial alchemy in modern history–and uttered the first roar of the Roaring Twenties.