Business Adventures, John Brooks, 2014 - This is a fabulous book based on pieces written by John Brooks between 1959 and 1969. There are 12 of them and subjects are very diverse but tied by the common theme of business/wall st. The book starts with the market crash of '62 (titled ‘the fluctuation’) and covers it in intricate detail of what was happening on the trading floor of the exchange during those tumultuous hours of an incredible crash and equally incredible recovery all within a short-span of time. The title it borrows from JP Morgan, the elder’s remark on the whole situation when questioned if the market will go up or down wherein he apparently remarked dryly that ‘it will fluctuate’.
‘The fate of the Edsel’ was an in-depth study of Ford motors on setting expectations, product development, production, market factors, economic situation and the fiasco of what followed post launch. A dispassionate dissection of the federal income tax follows next with a detailed history of its adoption and how it crept into our culture. Texas Gulf hitting copper in Canada and the subsequent mess the insiders got themselves in and the birth of groundbreaking insider trading regulations follows next. The rise and fall of xerox and the importance of innovation in business was one of my favourite parts of the book.
Stories about wall st. can’t be complete without an episode of a broker going belly-up but this one had an interesting twist where the exchange (NYSE) and its members pooled in their own resources to save the day. GE’s price-fixing and anti-trust case and the discussion on 20.5 and the power of incentives and vagueness of corporate communication brings to the fore the grey areas large companies operate in.
‘The last great corner’ reminded me of the jesse livermore book I read last year and unsurprisingly, he plays one of the essential parts of the short-squeeze. Most of these cases have lead to groundbreaking regulations from insider-trading, anti-trust to exchange regulations. There is a piece on how a govt. official could use his powers in the corporate world post retirement and follows the career of Lilienthal. ‘Stockholder season’ was a hilarious relief in observing what goes on in AGMs and the last one which occupied a quarter of the book is about central banks and currencies and a particular episode of defending the sterling in the 60s and the subsequent devaluation and gold rush.
This is a gold-mine of a business book as the topics covered are extremely diverse and the quality of writing keeps you turning the pages as it has almost a fictional quality to it. 9/10