Mergers & Acquisitions [Hardcover]

Dana Vachon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 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.)
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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)

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Customer Reviews

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

By 

R. Spell "raspell" (Memphis, TN USA) - See all my reviews
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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.

11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not a banking yarn, May 30, 2007

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Peter John Emblin (Lumpini, pathumwan BANGKOK Thailand) - See all my reviews
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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

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A light read, September 1, 2007

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C. Bennett (tennessee) - See all my reviews
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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.