Blood on the Street: The Sensational Inside Story of How Wall Street Analysts Duped a Generation of Investors [Hardcover]

Charles Gasparino (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0743250230 | ISBN-13: 978-0743250238 | Publication Date: January 11, 2005 | Edition: First Edition

Blood on the Street is a riveting account of the Wall Street scam in which ordinary investors lost literally billions of dollars -- in many cases their life savings -- in one of the greatest deceptions ever, by the crack reporter who broke the original story.

In one of the most outrageous examples of dirty dealing in the history of Wall Street, hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit profits were made during the booming 1990s as a result of research analysts issuing positive stock ratings on companies that kicked back investment banking business. Now, for the first time, award-winning journalist Charles Gasparino reveals the whole fascinating story of greed, arrogance, and corruption.

It was Gasparino's front-page reporting in The Wall Street Journal that brought the story to national attention and spurred New York State attorney general Eliot Spitzer to launch an official probe. Now, Gasparino goes behind his own headlines to tell the inside story of this spectacular swindle -- with revelations from his unprecedented access to never-before-published depositions and documents, including e-mail exchanges leading all the way up to Citigroup CEO Sanford Weill.

Drawing on his research and interviews with industry insiders, Gasparino takes readers into the back rooms of Wall Street's top investment firms and captures the outsize personalities of three key players: Salomon Smith Barney's Jack Grubman, a braggart with one of the largest salaries on Wall Street; Merrill Lynch's Henry Blodget, the Yale graduate who hyped his way to the top of the research pyramid; and Morgan Stanley's Mary Meeker, the "Queen of the Internet," who foresaw the market catastrophe but gave in to the pressures Blood on the Street shows how regulators, like former SEC chairman Arthur Levitt, allowed the deceptive practices to fester and grow during the 1990s bubble, leaving the door open for a then- little-known attorney general from New York State to step in and make his mark by holding Wall Street accountable.

Gasparino provides the first major account of Spitzer's rise to prominence, detailing how the attorney general pursued key players to build his case against Wall Street, including his shifting allegiance to the powerful New York Stock Exchange chairman Richard Grasso.

A fast-paced narrative rich in sharp insights, Blood on the Street is the definitive book on the financial debacle that affected millions of Americans.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

More than a chronicle of the 1990s tech-stock boom and the ensuing bust ... [it] has "bestseller" written all over it. -- Barron's, February 7, 2005:

There may be no more thorough, or readable, account of [analyst's] foibles than Charles Gasparino's Blood on the Street. -- The Washington Post, February 27, 2005:

From the Inside Flap

"There probably won't be a better book about these events. Notes Gasparino: 'This is a story where there are few heroes, and even fewer people willing to provide an honest account of what went wrong.' Blood on the Street will take most readers as close to the action as they are likely to get--and few will come away comfortable with what they learn." -- BusinessWeek

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; First Edition edition (January 11, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743250230
• ISBN-13: 978-0743250238
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #590,064 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Charles Gasparino is an on-air editor for CNBC, a columnist for the Daily Beast and the New York Post, and a freelance writer for Forbes and other publications. He previously wrote for Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal, where he covered issues on Wall Street, including pension funds, mutual funds, and regulatory issues. Gasparino has won numerous business journalism awards, and he is the author of Blood on the Street, which was a BusinessWeek bestseller and was listed by Barron's as one of the best business books of 2005, and King of the Club, which was named one of the best business books of 2007 by Library Journal.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

56 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Wall Street journalism masterpiece, February 18, 2005

By 

Bert Ruiz "Author" (Pleasantville, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blood on the Street: The Sensational Inside Story of How Wall Street Analysts Duped a Generation of Investors (Hardcover)

"Blood on the Street," by the former Wall Street Journal reporter Charles Gasparino is a journalism masterpiece. To this end, the author has firmly established himself as one of the "best & brightest" financial journalists in the nation today. Moreover, "Blood on the Street," is a sure bet to command strong attention for several big-time book awards.

On that note, Gasparino is a tireless investigator. His fascinating narrative tells the story of how Wall Street's most powerful investment banking groups (and senior management) often tailored "New Economy," dot com and telecommunication research to win deals that generated hundreds of millions of dollars in fees.

The sad thing about the unsavory/criminal practice is that hundreds of thousands of small investors suffered massive losses because they considered the research honest. However, the frightening aspect of Gasparino's reporting is that the Federal watchdogs at the Security Exchange Commission did little to protect small investors across the nation.

Gasparino's portrayal of the cast is superb. Jack Grubman, the top telecommunications analyst at Salomon Smith Barney and one of the highest paid executives on Wall Street is arrogant, mean-spirited, shallow and not particularly good looking. Henry Blodget, the Merrill Lynch golden boy from Yale (affectionately known as "King Henry," before the dot com bubble bursts) is a talented communicator but way out of his league when it comes to the earnest work of crunching numbers. And Mary Meeker called the "Queen of the Net," by Barron's is "petite, Midwestern, and famously hardworking" according to Gasparino. Meeker is the best of the lot (by far) but still succumbs to the pressure from investment bankers and becomes a "cheerleader" for big fee clients.

The primary hero of this sensational story is New York State attorney general Eliot Spitzer. He takes on the giant financial institutions and particularly humiliates Sandy Weill, the Citigroup CEO who without a doubt is the most powerful player on Wall Street. Unfortunately, there is no happy ending. Reforms are implemented and some investors manage to win litigation but for the most part "Wall Street analysts gets away with duping a generation of investors." Highly recommended.

Bert Ruiz

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Swindlers Running Berserk, February 18, 2005

By 

Acute Observer (By the Shore NJ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blood on the Street: The Sensational Inside Story of How Wall Street Analysts Duped a Generation of Investors (Hardcover)

Charles Gasperino was the reporter who revealed the corruption and scandals of Wall Street in front-page articles for the "Wall Street Journal". This book tells how Wall Street firms swindled billions during the 1990s. President Clinton's tax increase produced low interest rates that fueled the stock market expansion. But this bubble of New Economy stocks would inevitable burst (p.5). What would falling prices for broadband do to the billions of dollars in bonds (p.7)? The ending of corporate pension plans forced employees into the stock market, where individuals faced unforeseen and unknown risks (p.8). This demand caused prices to rise without any increase in underlying values. The culprits, says the author, was the analysts who pumped out research that justified overvalued stocks (p.8). But this is a cop-out; analysts are employees who do as their told. They're only a pawn in this game (p.10). Were investors "greedy"? That's blaming the victim, and admitting to fraud (misrepresenting the value of the item sold). But crooks can stay out of prison by paying off the politicians and the government they control. NY Attorney General Eliot Spitzer exposed this corrupt process. You should read this book if you plan to invest in the stock market, have an IRA or 401K, or wonder about the plan to invest Social Security monies into the next offerings of Wall Street. The average small investor isn't smart or nimble enough to benefit from advertised offerings.

Chapter 1 warns against listening to stock broker's "research": its just advertising designed to get you to buy a product (p.19). Chapter 2 tells how Internet stocks were measured in "hits" and "clicks", not earnings and share prices (p.30). The 'New Economy' is described in Chapter 3; they sold shares in companies that had no profits in the past year (p.55). Chapter 4 tells how companies like WorldCom paid for favorable reports (p.74). The 1996 Telecommunications Act forced telephone companies to open up to new competitors (p.85). Chapter 5 explains how average people were enticed to buy stocks with their savings (pp.96-97). Brokers peddled stock to small investors to gain sucker money (p.99). Could a dot-com company's headquarters be a post office box (p.105)? Does "get rich quick" investing work (p.112)? Chapter 6 explains what happened when stocks could no longer be pumped up - the price slumped to its real value.

Chapter 7 tells how analysts' true function was to sell deals to investors (p.131). The slow crash of tech stocks was one of the biggest destructions of wealth in the nation's history (p.187). The SEC was snoozing while people were losing (p.190). Upper class brokers stole more than organized crime (p.193)! The 9/11 tragedy distracted America from the various scandals and losses (p.230). Did Spitzer persecute Merrill (p.260)? Was the SEC asleep on the job? The end of the Glass-Steagall Act created massive financial companies that served the rich and powerful (p.266). Page 273 explained how brokerage firms are targeted. A deal was cut for reform (p.283). (Who represented the consumers?) Chapter 13 starts with the 'smoking gun' E-mails of Cutler and Grubman. It involved top executives (p.288). Using the telephone prevents any messages from being preserved (p.298). Will analysts be protected from investment bankers in the future (p.303)? Page 304 suggests an answer.

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Blood Flows Two Ways, January 20, 2005

By 

Francis B. Mckenna (NYC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blood on the Street: The Sensational Inside Story of How Wall Street Analysts Duped a Generation of Investors (Hardcover)

At the end of this fascinating book, it is apparent that "Blood Flows Two Ways". While millions of investors, most of them of the smaller kind, were battered and bloodied by the chicanery and misdeeds of corporate scoundrels and their complicit Wall Street brethern, in the end many of the bad guys were also bloodied. Indeed, one merely has to look at this week's newspapers to observe the forlorn images of Bernie Ebbers, Scott Sullivan and Denis Kozlowski and see how their turn to hemmorage has arrived. This is why it is certain that Mr. Gasparino's book, "Blood on the Street", has "legs" as some people would say. It will continue to capture the public's attention for some time because people care about these stories since so many of them were financially harmed by the events being discussed.

This is an impressive book for many reasons but perhaps what distinguishes it most is the deep level of "inside tract" insight into the thoughts, deeds and motives of the key participants in this sordid story. It is clear Mr. Gasparino has mastered the utility of the modern world of e-mails and the result is the exposure of so many intimate thoughts and actions. If the author helps to make Mary Meeker, Henry Blodgett, Jack Grubman, and Sandy Weil unpopular in the public eye, he is also sure to make Mr. Grubman's salacious e-mail playmate quite popular in certain male circles.

Mr. Gasparino has a gift for following the trail of each story in the book on a comprehensive, fast pace basis and at the conclusion he has the abilty to pull all of the disparate stories cogently together. I look forward to his future books on the topic of corporate malfeasance because we should all know
something that countless investors who are the victims in this story apparently did not know - this type of greedy and dispicable behavior has happened often in the past and will certainly happen again.