Customer Reviews

The King of Oil: The Secret Lives of Marc Rich

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1 star:		(8)

 

 

As much as any book can, The King of Oil reveals an incredible amount of information into the world of Marc Rich. Because Marc Rich is so secretive it is hard to compare this book to any other written pieces about him.....but this book is fascinating because it touches upon the geopolitics, the emergence of the spot market for oil, commodity trading, presidential politics, business etc.

The downside of this book is that it doesn't reveal "how" Marc Rich won crucial contracts, established relationships and competed with other commodity traders. Perhaps it's too hard to reconstruct the deal-making conversations, but it would be interesting to hear the inside stories of those critical turning points in his career.

The book is an easy read and well worth it for anyone who is interested in the intersection of geopolitics and business.

I read "Metal Men" by Copetas when it was published in the 1980's. At the time it was a supposed expose about Marc Rich and his expoitative behavior and treachery, and was the only book written about him. There was never an interview with Rich in the book, and when I re-read it after the Clinton pardon in 2001 it still left me with a feeling that alot was missing.
This new book by Ammann is a satisfying, eye-opening piece of balanced journalism that sheds enough light on Rich's life and works to allow the reader to make his own judgment on the man and the circumstances.
A well-written read for anyone interested in the life and motivations of an international businessman and, by default, political figure.

This is good book and I would daresay, an important one. For a man of his importance and prominence, Marc Rich has not been the focus of too many books. The total access that the author got to write this book makes it a very worthy read. For decades the only side of this story I knew was the prosecution's case. Ammann's interviews with Rich allow us to hear the other side, to hear counter arguments and perspective from the man himself. Does he give a totally balanced and detailed explanation of Rich's activities? No. Does it matter? Not really, since someone else will probably have to write that book. This subject area is ripe for further research and I welcome Ammann's effort here.

The enigma that is Marc Rich comes thru clearly. As a brilliant commodities trader he did whatever it took to make money including trading with some of the world's most vile regimes and despicable characters.

He claims, and after reading this book I believe he may be correct, that he never broke any laws and that he paid the taxes he owed. Rich believes he was railroaded by Rudy Giulliani for poltical reasons and for the exposure it would give the future Mayor of New York.

Rich is not a sympathetic character but I found it fascinating that while the U.S. Marshall's chased him around the world for 25 years, he was willing to help other agencies of the U.S. and Israel by giving them access to his vast network of people in places dangerous like Iran, Iraq, Libya,and Yemen.

Once he made his mega-fortune he also used his own money ( more than $100 million) for charitable or humanitarian purposes with great effect.

The sections covering his pardon by President Clinton are fascinating and gives an insight into how the pardon process works, and what went wrong with this pardon in the end. Ultimately Rich will never again enter the USA.

Rich seems to have lost almost everything but his fortune. His Country, his wife of over 20 years and a daughter to cancer. Finally, he was thrown out of the company he built by the very ingrates he had made obscenely wealthy.

By the end of the book Rich seemed to me to be a sad and melancholy man living in his beautiful Switzerland home, far from the center of the action he once so craved. A prisoner in his gilded cage, placed there by his own blind ambition and singular chase for money.

Ammann's book on Marc Rich is essentially a wildly sycophantic PR effort, which attempts to compensate for what Ammann asserts as Rich's "PR advisers [having] not kept up with the times" (p. 139).

Straying more than a bit from pure `business journalism', Ammann at one point oddly fetes Rich with: "At seventy-four, Rich still exhibits the handsome features that made him such a good-looking man in his younger years. Once can see a strong resemblance to Rudolph Valentino [!!!!], the tragic star of the silent film era, in Rich's earlier photographs" (p.144).

The book contains countless factual errors regarding governments, regions and leaders of the world that traded with Rich. This work doesn't reveal the "hows" of Rich's methods so much as the "whys", all the while drawing an unnecessary mystique around Rich, his colleagues and enablers, and the state of commodity-backed global fiscal corruption in general.

Ammann maliciously labels Iran - which Marc Rich utilized under two regimes to build his oil trading wealth on - as an "anti-Semitic regime" that's hell-bent on destroying Israel, despite A) continued dealings between Iran and both Marc Rich & Co. then, as well as its current Swiss manifestation, Glencore, now; and B) tens of thousands of Jews living there for millennia without the kinds of pogroms or genocide insinuated by this agenda-ridden author.

As other reviewers also pointed out, Ammann treacherously floats that anti-Semitism drove the US prosecutor's legal campaign against Marc Rich. The author nonchalantly does so by having Rich confirm that such is the case, only to then include a brief, terse response from Sandy Weinberg in firm rebuttal as the end of it. This is gutter journalism at its worst.

Ammann lacks the legal background to lend credible analysis to the legal case against Rich, but doesn't let that stop him from trying to perceptually vindicate Rich nonetheless. He does so with essentially delayed caveats from some Ivy League tax law professors and Rich's own counsel, while in large part painting Rich as a wronged hard working immigrant who fled the Holocaust with nothing. The US prosecution team is painted as inept, even oafish amateurs with a clear axe to grind against a hardworking, focused, discreet, rich Jewish émigré.

Applying appalling reasoning, Ammann offers that "[i]f we are to follow the time-honored American tradition of `innocent until proven guilty', then Rich must be considered innocent." This, just after conceding that Rich's "case never had the opportunity to go to trial, as Rich never returned to the United States."

Brilliant.

It's the equivalent of claiming that, technically film director Roman Polanski - another fugitive who fled US law - must also be considered innocent because, technically, he was never formally convicted.

Ammann further blatantly contradicts himself in reviewing the US legal case against Rich. In one instance, he claims: "It is the purpose of this book not to prove Rich's guilt or innocence but to pose questions and to point out the mistakes made throughout the entire affair by all sides" (p. 134). A mere seven pages later, however, Ammann proclaims: "Yet I am not convinced that Rich would actually have been found guilty in court. There is simply too much reasonable doubt surrounding his guilt. I have come to this decision after my conversations with members of the judiciary, diplomats, and other individuals directly involved in the case and after having viewed countless documents, some of which were confidential" [confidential to whom, exactly?!?]. Again, Ammann is not an attorney, but a Swiss-born and based journalist.

Additionally, Ammann fails to point out a core contradiction in Rich's statements versus Rich's behavior. At one point, Rich justified his dealings with Iran, Cuba and other red-flagged states with: "Business has nothing to do with politics" and "I'm not a political person. We were not a political company" and still "[b]usiness is neutral. You can't run a trading company based on sympathies." All of that said, Rich nonetheless contributed generously to the Israeli state and her intelligence imperatives as a key, deep-pocketed "sayan", and was gratuitously acknowledged/rewarded for doing so by leading Israeli politicians and military leaders.

These same leaders lobbied Bill Clinton personally and directly to pardon Rich - an illustrated process that remains the most telling content of the book.

Also, and despite his apparently matchless level of access, Ammann did not provide enough detail on Rich's companies' operations, nor on the global energy and commodity sector mechanisms that allowed for Rich to operate so fluidly. The book could've dwelled less on the cult-of-personality surrounding its subject, his colleagues and allies, and more on the vital issues involving the core commodity listed in the book's hubristic title.

Ultimately, Ammann did not write this book for the wider public, for aspiring business people, for Rich's progeny, or certainly for anyone curious about Rich's legal case. He wrote it as an act of genuflection towards the elite, who he certainly had unique access to and utilized in order to `re-brand' Marc Rich whilst nodding and winking at the wider, opaque global realm of commodity and currency trading he claims Rich invented in large part.

While it might be true the author would be free to write whatever he wanted, the book reads like the deal between the author and marc was a wink wink nod nod in that the book would be favorable to marc rich and try to redeem himself with the public.

the book lacks the details on how Marc did his deals. This book is for entertainment purposes only and it is not very useful at all.

Is there any prospect as frightening as a political show trial in the court of public opinion?

Reading about the 17-year government witch hunt for Marc Rich - the global commodities trader credited with inventing the spot oil market - I was reminded of an old quote attributed to Cicero:

"A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such creatures?"

In the early 1980s Rich became a prototype for the celebrity show trial, having been accused of 1) the largest tax fraud in history and 2) "trading with the enemy" through the duration of the Iran hostage crisis.

Rich was essentially a star-making vehicle for a fame-hungry prosecutor you may have heard of, Rudy Giuliani, launching the career in politics that followed.

For the reader with strong liberterian instincts, the thrust of government overreach in the Rich story is nauseating. The U.S. government tried to pursue Rich by means fair and foul for 17 years, including a kidnapping scheme in blatant violation of Swiss laws. (In refusing to succumb to U.S. bullying, the Swiss government is an unsung hero in this tale.)

The bungled extradition attempts came after Giuliani had used RICO, a controversial legal statue designed for mafia cases, to essentially shut down Rich's commodity trading business and extract hundreds of millions of dollars at gunpoint. (Imagine the government freezing your assets and mortally threatening your livelihood before there is any trial - forcing your enterprise to settle or die - and you get the idea.)

Rich ultimately left the United States for Switzerland, never to come back, because he feared the sensationalized media treatment (gleefully encouraged by Giuliani and others) would increase his odds of a possible lifetime prison sentence, with prosecutors crowing about 100+ years of jail time and refusing to discuss finer points of evidence.

The mind boggles at the mindset necessary for one man to pursue another in such blatant fashion. Another government operative, Ken Hill, spent 14 years "solely and exclusively" committed to the Rich case, obsessing over the bitter, vindictive image he and other crusaders had created in their own minds. What kind of life could that possibly be?

The story as told by the book's author, Daniel Ammann, is unquestionably sympathetic to Rich. But that seems reasonable, based on the evidence presented, and also based on the merciless beating Rich's reputation took in the hands of his detractors. There are many who see him as "the biggest devil" to this day.

There is nothing wrong with diligent pursuit of justice, obviously, or upholding the rule of law. What is so off-putting (again from a libertarian perspective) is how selectively the rule of law is applied.

In other words, an individual with a show trial profile may be pursued to the ends of the earth because it conveniently fits the image-burnishing goals of the prosecutors - yet at the same time, activities of proven and far greater corruption, covered over through deep complications or access to the Washington power structure, are routinely ignored.

There was perhaps nothing so galling, for example, as the trillions of dollars lifted out of taxpayers' pockets in recent years via the global financial crisis - an insider con job orchestrated at such high levels that the public (and the SEC) had zero chance of understanding. The true criminality is embedded in the system itself, and the Giulianis and Weinbergs of the world could care less.

The "trading with the enemy" charges leveled against Rich also seemed gallingly hypocritical. After all, is anyone as actively involved in "trading with the enemy" as the United States government itself? One would not be surprised to find that more than half the regimes who give the U.S. trouble were, at one time or another, propped up by U.S operatives in the first place. (On top of that, one hardly needs to bring up Iraq, Afghanistan, CIA connections to the "war on drugs", and so on.)

At the same time, the tax questions that originally entangled Rich - for which there is still a credible case that nothing illegal was done, as interpreted through the lens of a Swiss company operating under Swiss laws - were born of Nixon's ridiculously byzantine system of oil price controls. (Which, by the way, worsened the energy crisis rather than improving it.)

The fact of the matter is that Rich was an easy man to hate, and to prosecute in the public eye, because of his willingness to do fully legal business (from the perspective of a neutral Swiss corporation) with unsavory characters like Iran, Angola, and South Africa at a time others preferred to grandstand on moral issues.

This willingness to operate in the "gray areas" of capitalism (as Amman dubs them) allowed Rich to provide significant value to large-scale buyers and sellers of vital commodities, especially regarding transactions between those countries who, on an official public level, professed to have nothing to do with each other (the most eye-opening example being mutually beneficial trade between Iran and Israel).

Questions of morality and government hypocrisy aside, "The King of Oil" is a fascinating tale of how one of the most successful traders of the twentieth century built his business at the heart of the global commodities trade.

It should be noted that Rich is not a trader in the modern-day popular sense of the term, i.e. one who moves quickly in and out of positions and uses stop losses. He began with Phillipp Brothers, a commodities trading house later acquired and spun off as Phibro, in 1954, nearly three decades before crude oil futures hit the NYMEX.

The business then, and the business of Marc Rich + Co. as it grew, was facilitating long-term arrangements between commodity buyers and sellers on a very large scale. The typical profit margins of "commodities trading" as Rich practiced it were generally small, perhaps only two or three percentage points on a deal, but the scale of activity - hundreds of millions to billions - made it an incredibly lucrative practice.

In addition to matching buyers and sellers, handling transport and distribution, and making discreet use of well-placed contacts in dozens of countries, Rich's firm acted as something of a de facto investment bank for many of its developing world partners, facilitating access to international loans and letters of credit (or even investing the necessary capital itself). Some of the biggest scores also came via aggressive directional exposure to rising commodity prices. (Marc Rich + Co. eventually became Glencore International, with mentions of the founder purged from its history.)

All in all "The King of Oil" is a fast and light read, interweaving a compelling story of political intrigue with the twentieth century development of global commodity markets. It is easy for an idealistic public to take a sensationalized view of Marc Rich, but not so easy to see how the wheels of trade would turn without men like him behind the scenes.

This was one of my favourite books of 2009. At last someone could meet Marc Rich and get more than monosyllables out of him. This book is very well researched and I congratulate the author for his tenacity in explaining to other people what oil trading is all about. Not only that, we learn that Marc Rich's ex-wife was perhaps not, as previously widely reported, the sole individual who helped gain a last-minute pardon from Bill Clinton. Some Israeli friends seemed to have helped a lot too.

I'm still not sure whether Marc Rich is a saint or a sinner. But, after reading this book, you have to admit, he's a very clever man and extremely astute when it comes to business.

As for Bill Clinton, I can imagine that last-minute pardon still seems a mystery to most people.

Marc Rich says he will never return to the United States for a visit, just in case he's arrested, for example, for a minor parking offence. Does that mean he doesn't really believe too much in that presidential pardon?

You have written a very entertaining book, Daniel Ammann.

Finally had a chance to read this book and learn more about the story of Marc Rich. Extremely well researched, many numbers are there to depict both the professional and personal life of the man who "invented" on spot market for oil and how he made it from nothing to one of the most successful commodity trader ever. An easy and interesting, it give a "non-American" perspective on the various crimes he was accused with and all the troubles he's been through with the American justice (thus arguably more objective and less media-biased on that particular matter). It's nicely written, Daniel keeps a journalistic tone although at some point he seems over-sympathizing with MR, but he simply tries to present facts and figures for a better understanding of the commodity trading world over the last four decades. Also, the whole polemic around Marc Rich & co takes a very different meaning when it's analyzed from a much larger "big picture" perspective. Very interesting to think about what happens behind closed doors and the political relations between USA-Iran-Israel, especially when there's a lot of cash on (under) the table. Not sure all data and infos in the book are accurate and some of it should be taken with a grain of salt.

Looking at the other negative reviews of this book, I'm avoiding the trap of discrediting the book by using the poor argument "glencore is a bad company, so we should ban everything that has ever been in contact with it, and marc rich is a vile person, etc...". I simply won't go there, and this review is not about marc rich, his actions, his ethics, his business drive and his morality. This isn't about if he's a good or bad human, but it is about a book that provides more information about his background and the context where he has worked and done business (and with whom).

It's not a life-changing book, but it's worth a read - it's inspiring, educative, and hard to stop before your read the whole thing. I wish there was more information there about the whole global trading history and the socio-economic context in which all these deals took place, etc. But hey, in the end the book is about marc rich anyway... right?

I was waiting for a book on the life of Marc Rich.
The Author here give a balanced account of the Rich story.
I read the whole book in 2 days a gripping story showing the human side of Marc Rich.
Love him or hate him you have to admire his abilities.
The chronicling of his business dealings are amazing taking you all over the globe.