Outrageous Fortune: The Rise and Ruin of Conrad and Lady Black [Hardcover]

Tom Bower (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 7, 2006

The rise and fall of media tycoon Conrad Black and his journalist wife, Barbara Amiel, is one of the great stories of the modern business world. In Outrageous Fortune, London-based journalist Tom Bower reveals how Conrad and Lady Black used other people's money to finance a billionaire's lifestyle, winning friends and influence in London and New York along the way. Their story of overweening ambition and greed is a modern-day classic of hubris.

Born into considerable wealth in Canada, Conrad Black bought and sold (but never effectively managed) several businesses, from mining and tractors to broadcasting companies and newspapers. In 1985 Black's holding com-pany, Hollinger, bought the Telegraph Group, the British newspaper publishing conglomerate. In the years that followed, Black additionally became the proprietor of the Chicago Sun-Times, the Jerusalem Post, and a host of other magazines and newspapers in the English-speaking world.

In 1992 Conrad married Barbara Amiel, who later famously said, "I have an extravagance that knows no bounds." Besotted by his wife, he began living way beyond his means. Fabulous parties, jewelry, clothes, and multiple mansions followed, and by 2001 Black had renounced his Canadian citizenship—which he called "an impediment to my progress in another more amenable jurisdiction"—in order to become a life peer in the British House of Lords.

But the scheming deceptive duo's lies came crashing down when, in November 2003, an American report accused Black of "outright fraud," "ethical corruption," and "corporate kleptocracy." Black was forced out as Hollinger's chief executive, and two years later he was charged with eight counts of fraud—allegations that he will vigorously deny at his trial in Chicago, beginning in March of 2007.

Based on hundreds of interviews with bankers, politicians, journalists, mega-deal makers, and close friends of Conrad and Lady Black, Outrageous Fortune is packed with lively anecdotes and salacious gossip. It is a hugely enter-taining and engrossing account of gullibility in high places.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Tom Bower, a London-based historian, broad-caster, and journalist, is the author of several acclaimed books about tycoons, including works on Richard Branson, Geoffrey Robinson, and Robert Maxwell.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Harper (November 7, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061146145
• ISBN-13: 978-0061146145
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,442,237 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A rip-snorter - but needlessly and counterproductively brutal, December 21, 2006

By 

O. Buxton "Olly Buxton" (Highgate, UK) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Outrageous Fortune: The Rise and Ruin of Conrad and Lady Black (Hardcover)

Now that the levee has broken, you would have to go a long way to garner sympathy for a couple with the hubris of Conrad Black and Barbara Amiel, but in his splendidly vituperative "Outrageous Fortune", Tom Bower almost pulls it off. This is a real piece of work (though, as Bower might say, if the shoe fits...) and no effort has been made to present any sort of balance whatsoever: Even the title is snide: Not "Conrad and Barbara Black", nor "Lord and Lady Black", but "Conrad and *Lady* Black" - a snipe at her overweening delight at ennoblement, and perhaps a cute reference to Black's habit of referring to his wife (from well before his peerage) as "the Little Lady".

Make no mistake, this is a rip-snorter of a read: I've been devouring pages, missing stops on the tube, walking into lamp-posts and zoning out of conference calls on its account: it is the Barbarians at the Gate of the new Millennium - tempered only by the fact that its characters seem transparently unleavened by the financial expertise, corporate understanding, commercial cunning, capitalist audacity and iron balls of the KKR crowd: these protagonists, as Bower paints them, are as self-absorbed, self-aggrandising and self-enriching as the best of them, whilst still being deluded and dim-witted schmucks.

Which is rather suspect in itself. If you accept that view then it is truly remarkable that the Blacks lasted as long as they did at the top of the pile. Bower does not dispute that Conrad Black attracted - and retained for decades - some high-quality help: Lord Carrington proposed his ennoblement and Baroness Thatcher seconded it (despite Bower's assertion that she found Black "ordinary"); Henry Kissinger sat on Hollinger's board even until the endgame played out (as did Richard Perle and KKR founder Henry Kravis' wife). So either Conrad Black was an extraordinary con-artist, or Bower is not giving credit where it is due.

Nor is much credence given to Conrad Black's intellect or Amiel's journalistic prowess: Bower would have you believe that Black simply has a large vocabulary, a photographic memory and a penchant for gormlessly reciting details of naval battles at dinner parties, and suddenly took a couple of months to dash off a rangy biography of Roosevelt, which did nothing but illustrate his own shoddy scholarship. Now I haven't read this book (and nor, at 1245 pages, am I planning to), but the critical reaction to it on this site - which I have a healthy respect for - has been almost unanimously positive. Again, you get the sense that credit might not have been given where due.

Finally, the book is studded with of startling exchanges which are set out as direct quotations - in situations where it is difficult to believe that the remarks could have possibly been recorded nor word-for-word remembered: Amiel's off-the-cuff remarks during dinner parties and to household staff and Black's asides to his co-directors during meetings and on the telephone over a twenty five year period are faithfully reproduced as if from a stenographer's notebook. I can't help thinking Bower is talking a biographer's licence here - that's a polite way of saying he made these quotes up - perhaps on the basis of a vaguer recollection like "then Conrad said something rude" or some such thing.

Tom Bower has certainly done some homework and tracks the financial shenanigans skilfully, and I doubt there will be much sympathy out there amongst the schadenfreude for the misfortune of an unpleasant couple who are in the process of getting what has been coming to them, but all the same this relentlessly brutal entry can't help but remind us that this celebrated president's biogrpaher isn't the one writing this part of the last century's history.

Olly Buxton

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating account of a fascinating duo, December 11, 2006

By 

Sergio Negrete Cardenas (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Outrageous Fortune: The Rise and Ruin of Conrad and Lady Black (Hardcover)

Apparently only a miracle will stop Lord Black from missing his billionaire lifestyle from a prison cell. Tom Bower's account is gripping. The subjects of his attention, Lord and Lady Black, certainly are much more interesting that the average pair accused of siphoning millions from unsuspecting shareholders. Bower credibly builds the portrait of two people that feel that the law should not apply to the ostensibly rich. Notably, the intellectual pretenses of Lady Black are effectively drowned in the repeated demonstration that, as she said, her extravagance knew no bounds.

Bower's examination of the various facets of Lord Black is solid. The multiple quotes from his subject denying at all times any wrongdoing, always in elegant terms, confirm the picture of a man that considered himself a mix of intellectual giant and paragon of rapacious capitalism at its best (or worst). Apparently those that were silly enough to entrust their money to him fully deserved the systematic pillage that Lord Black and his associates applied to the companies under their management. The record of how Lord Black used people with solid reputations to get seals of approval for his shenanigans should send shudders down the spines of those that think that seating at a Board of Directors is a good opportunity to get some money and a good lunch while, at most, giving a glimpse at the reports and requests from the company's management before signing their endorsement.

The timing of Bower's work is superb considering that Lord Black will face trial soon. After finishing it, the reader is ready to follow the saga to what will most probably be a fitting conclusion.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book About Greedster Duo, January 14, 2007

By 

Charles J. Rector (Woodstock, IL United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Outrageous Fortune: The Rise and Ruin of Conrad and Lady Black (Hardcover)

Conrad Black was originally a fairly decent man who lived fairly modestly by billionaire standards. Then, he was seduced by one Barbara Amiel who persuaded him to divorce his first wife and marry her in the bargain. Once married, the new Lady Black went about raising the couple's living standards to absurdly lavish heights.

All this luxurious excess cost a ton of money. So, Black set about looting the publicly held company in which he held the controlling votes. He installed a compliant board of directors, slashed expenses and either fired or sued anyone who objected.

However, all this corruption eventually attracted the attention of both investigative reporters and law enforcement. For all of Lord Black's power, he was ultimately unable to prevent his demise. He has been ousted from the ownership of his company and is on the verge of standing on criminal trial in his native Canada.

This is an excellent book about how greed and avarice often leads to one's own demise.