Mergers & Acquisitions and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle. Learn more

Buy Used
Used - Acceptable See details
$3.16 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details

or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
 
   
Kindle Edition
 
   
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
Mergers & Acquisitions
 
 
Start reading Mergers & Acquisitions on your Kindle in under a minute.

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

Mergers & Acquisitions [Hardcover]

Dana Vachon (Author)
3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)


Available from these sellers.


Formats

Amazon Price New from Used from
Kindle Edition --  
Hardcover --  
Paperback --  
Audio, CD, Bargain Price $7.54  
Audible Audio Edition, Unabridged $15.95 or Free with Audible 30-day free trial

Book Description

April 5, 2007
A stylish and hilarious novel about the lives and loves of well-to-do young Manhattanites in their first year on Wall Street, destined to become one of the year's most buzzed-about debuts.

Mergers & Acquisitions is the story of Tommy Quinn, a recent Georgetown grad who has just landed the job of his dreams as an investment banker at J. S. Spenser, and the perfect girl, Frances Sloan, the daughter of one of New York's oldest moneyed families. As he travels from the most exclusive ball rooms of the Racquet and Tennis Club to the stuffiest boardrooms of J. S. Spenser, from the golf links of Piping Rock to the bedrooms of Park Avenue, and from the debauched yacht of a Mexican billionaire to the Ritalin-strewn prep-school dorm room of his younger brother, he finds that the job and the girl are not what they once seemed.

Sharply written, fast-paced, and bitingly witty, Mergers & acquisitions is a compulsively readable story of Manhattan's young, ambitious, and wealthy. Set against the backdrop of money, lust, power, corruption, cynicism, energy, and excitement that is Wall Street, it is suffused with an authenticity that only an author who lives in that world can provide. A former investment banker at J. P. Morgan, Vachon offers an insider's point of view on the financial scene, and he knows the moneyed turf of Manhattan inside out.


Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A graduate of Duke University in 2002 and an analyst for J.P. Morgan for a few years after that, Dana Vachon is a writing wunderkind along the lines of Jay McInerney in Bright Lights, Big City and Bret Easton Ellis in Less Than Zero. However, the similarity ends with the theme of young guys on the razzle, because Vachon's protagonist, unlike his predecessors, observes and learns without falling into the honey pot. Tommy Quinn graduates from Georgetown and lands a job with J.S. Spenser, an investment banking firm. His major was Interdisciplinary Studies, a kind of Liberal Arts wastebasket, and he knows nothing about finance. In the brain-deadening Spenser training program he hooks up with Roger Thorne, a really crass human being, but one who knows all the moves. The genesis of the friendship sets the tone rather well: They are both wearing Gucci loafers and Rolex watches.

The story begins at Roger's engagement party, with Tommy waiting for his erstwhile girlfriend Frances to arrive. Everyone thinks that she has been at a spa, but she has really been in an upscale Home for the Unsure, being ministered to by a freaky shrink. The story then moves backward through Tommy's ruminations about meeting Roger, "the John Audubon of preppy flesh," and about connecting with Terence Mathers, Spenser's guru of mergers and acquisitions. At the end of Mathers's first speech to the new Spenserites, Tommy says: "We had all partaken of the capitalist Kool-Aid and the applause was as much a tribute to the stupidity of young men and women after four years of elite education as it was to the success of Spenser's training program." Greed is definitely good in this atmosphere--the more the better--but Tommy is not really a full-fledged participant. After Tommy blows his first assignment, he and Roger are sent to Cabo San Lucas on a major deal. What happens there is life-threatening and hilariously over-the-top but perfectly plausible and moves Tommy to rethink his life path. Vachon has left his own fledgling financial career behind, and instead has written a first-rate first novel that is smart, funny, witty, and wise. --Valerie Ryan

From Publishers Weekly

Greenwich, Conn.–bred Vachon did a stint at JP Morgan after graduating from Duke, an experience that no doubt influenced this dizzying romp through investment banking heaven and hell, which rises and falls among numbing corporate indoctrination, pressure-choked deadlines, fabulously swank parties and an obscenely over-the-top business junket complete with kidnappers. At the heart of it all is Tommy Quinn, an upper-middle-class kid from Westchester whose Georgetown degree in Interdisciplinary Studies leaves him bereft of finance know-how. No matter, once Tommy hooks up with Princeton grad Roger Thorne (who has a real pedigree, a reputation for sexual prowess and a hot sister), and the two pursue careers based mainly on smoke and mirrors. Vachon's glee in poking fun at this complex, debased world is evident in his purposefully excessive descriptions of sex (particularly Roger's "dude"-laden monologues), drugs and ruthless execs, but there's a certain amount of drooling involved, too, in the intricate descriptions of jewels and bonuses. Tommy's romance with Frances Sloan, a troubled trust fund heiress, is predictable (though still diverting), and his and Roger's careers (along with several gratuitous deaths that mark them) have denouements and aftermaths that feel forced at best. Imagine a tyro Jay McInerney without the pathos and the been-there, done-that offhandedness. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 304 pages
  • Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover; 1st edition (April 5, 2007)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1594489343
  • ISBN-13: 978-1594489341
  • Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #464,663 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

 

Customer Reviews

28 Reviews
5 star:
 (13)
4 star:
 (4)
3 star:
 (3)
2 star:
 (2)
1 star:
 (6)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.6 out of 5 stars (28 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Another Investment Banker/Society Tale Weakly Done, June 6, 2007
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Mergers & Acquisitions (Hardcover)
I'm an investment banker at a regional firm so I always enjoy business biographies based around the biz. Unfortunately, half these books spend more time on New York society and the personal lives and desires of people more interested in the new hot restaurant than a good character based novel. In other words, Bonfire on the Vanities it's not.

The book synopsis on Amazon supplies the telling clue: a book along the lines of Bright Lights, Big City and Less Than Zero. If you like those two books, this is for you. For me, the significant time spent developing plot lines around the truly wealthy with whom he works and his privileged background which can only be described as upper middle class wears very thin. Another mother with a drinking problem. Another description of the girlfriend with a super wealthy but very dysfunctional family. It becomes very tedious.

However, there are passages of total irreverence that are quite entertaining. His closest friend of wealth who "brown noses" his way through the job but whose true goal is to bed beautiful women. His own miserable failings in his job at which he quickly recognizes he is terrible and attempts to search for a company angel to protect him from the inevitable firing is also interesting. And I must admit that the closing Latin American party on the yacht provides great comic relief.

Overall, mildly entertaining with no great attachment to the characters. An OK read that I would not recommend.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No


11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Not a banking yarn, May 30, 2007
By 
Peter John Emblin (Lumpini, pathumwan BANGKOK Thailand) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Mergers & Acquisitions (Hardcover)
I thought this would be a fictional insight into the world of bankers. Its more an insight into the world of high society New York. A good airplane read but dont expect too much depth
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No


4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars A light read, September 1, 2007
By 
This review is from: Mergers & Acquisitions (Hardcover)
I did enjoy this book, but I wish the author had written a few more chapters on actually working in the office of J.S.Spenser. The author does have a comic way of writing, I liked the part where the main chararter converted the US dollar into itself! I also liked how the book was written, it started in the present at his friend's engagment, then the next chapters where in the past and the last chapter was at the engagment party. Though I did find the main character's girlfriend a bit disturbing.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Most Recent Customer Reviews











Only search this product's reviews



Inside This Book (learn more)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
First Sentence:
The bride-to-be needed to change the dressing on her wound, and her black-suited mother let her know it by pointing to her shoulder, then raising her Botoxed brow as best she could. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Roger Thorne, Terence Mathers, Yves Grandchatte, Big Larry, Isabella Ferraz Salles, Lauren Schuyler, Oscar de la Hoya, New York, Dewey Ananias, Wall Street, Sophie Dvornik, Park Avenue, Aunt Halsey, Spenser Partners, Lord Peregrine, Latin America, Portsmouth Abbey, Makkesh Makker, Ashley Aitken, Tyler Russell, Prince Fahad, Flora Fanatucci, Laurance Whistlestopper, Costa Rica, Café Boulud
Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Search Inside This Book:

What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?


Tags Customers Associate with This Product

 (What's this?)
Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
 
(2)

Your tags: Add your first tag
 

Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
Search all Amazon discussions
   
Related forums



So You'd Like to...

Create a guide


Look for Similar Items by Category


Look for Similar Items by Subject