Shades of Black: Conrad Black - His Rise and Fall [Hardcover]

Richard Siklos (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 9, 2004

At the turn of the new millennium, Conrad Black was living the dream he had imagined for his entire life: he was married to a beautiful, intelligent woman who shared his political outlook and love of a lavish lifestyle; a Gulfstream jet ferried the couple among palatial homes in London, Toronto, Palm Beach, and New York; and he owned, among many other newspapers, the Daily Telegraph in London, England, the Jerusalem Post, and the Chicago Sun-Times. He would soon be granted a peerage and a seat in Britain’s House of Lords, his parties and company boards were packed with luminaries, and he was planning to write a biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt that would build his stature and presence in the United States, the country he worshipped.

What a difference four years make. Today, Conrad Black’s career and reputation are in free fall. He has been kicked out of Hollinger International, his main U.S. company, by its board of directors, and his prize possession, the Daily Telegraph, has been sold out from under him. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the FBI are investigating, and lawsuits are flying in every direction. In this definitive biography of the most famous Canadian businessperson of this generation, Richard Siklos delivers a riveting account of Black’s life and, for the first time, the inside story of his humiliating downfall, drawing on scores of new interviews conducted in four countries and on newly disclosed materials.

It is the story Siklos started to write in the 1995 edition of his bestselling biography of Conrad Black, Shades of Black, and now tells in full, gripping detail in this completely revised, updated, and vastly expanded edition, now subtitled Conrad Black – His Rise and Fall.

Editorial Reviews

Review

From the reviews of the original edition:

“Exhaustive and strangely riveting… a fine book.”
–Toronto Sun

“Black’s wheelings, dealings and bluffs make for entertaining reading.”
–Ottawa Citizen

“Lively, thoroughly researched and fair… Siklos writes with confidence about Black’s often convoluted financial operations.”
–Times Literary Supplement (UK)

From the Inside Flap

At the turn of the new millennium, it seemed that Conrad Black had everything he'd ever dreamed of: he'd married a beautiful, intelligent woman who shared his political outlook and love of a lavish lifestyle; he had palatial homes in London, Toronto, Palm Beach, and New York; and he owned, among many other newspapers, two prestigious broadsheets, the Telegraph in London, England, and the Jerusalem Post, papers which he could and did use to try to shape public policy. He had even been granted a lifetime peerage in Britain's House of Lords, albeit at the cost of giving up his Canadian citizenship, and he had divested his holding company, Hollinger Inc., of the money-losing National Post.

What a difference four years make. Today, Conrad Black's career – and likely his mood – is in freefall. He has been kicked out of Hollinger International, the subsidiary of Hollinger Inc. that owns the newspapers. He's been accused of helping himself to hundreds of millions of Hollinger's dollars. He's being hounded by shareholders and financial regulators. He was even brought before the Delaware judge Leo Strine, who in his 133-page scathing assessment of Black's business practices – and personality – called Black "evasive and unreliable" and ruled that he had "persistently and seriously" violated corporate and contractual obligations owed to Hollinger International. It's possible that criminal charges will be laid against him.

In a reversal of the archetypical rags-to-riches story, Siklos writes of a man's plunge from riches to figurative rags. It is the story he started to write in the 1995 edition of his bestselling biography of Conrad Black and now tells in full, gripping detail in this completely revised, updated, and expanded edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 528 pages
• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart; Exp Upd edition (November 9, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0771080719
• ISBN-13: 978-0771080715
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 1.8 x 9.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #826,936 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Authoritative, April 6, 2007

By 

D. M. Ryan "http://thegoldbubble.blogspot.com" (Toronto, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Shades of Black: Conrad Black - His Rise and Fall (Hardcover)

Mr. Siklos' biography, for those who want to get the measure of Conrad Black, is close to definitive. He not only corrects minor inaccuracies in Peter Newman's THE ESTABLISHMENT MAN, but he also extends the story right up to the 2004 ouster.

As you read through it, you'll see certain parallels in Black's life emerging. Conrad Black was the younger son of a businessman who retired early, at a time when retirement at forty-eight was considered odd. As a child, Conrad had a capacious memory, honed into perfection by his father's training of him. He was mentored by Bud MacDougald, the top boss of a dividend company named Argus. It was there that Conrad Black hit upon the idea of accumulating cash flow to use for takeovers, and where he developed an inclination for asset shuffles and corporate reorganizations. Previous to Black being ushered into the Argus world, he and his long-time partner, David Radler, had built up a chain of newspapers, Sterling, almost from the ground up. The secret behind their success was, essentially, cost-cutting. Black had found some notoriety as well as fame from his writings, but it was his takeover of Argus, a true coup, that brought him fame as a businessperson in 1978. Notoreity followed fame when two of the companies controlled by Argus began to founder; he also encountered some legal trouble in the early 1980s.

Conrad Black does have a law degree, and is comfortable following precedent or custom, but is also comfortable with grey areas in the law, and in pushing the envelope of custom or tradition. (An example of this last trait would be his supplementation of Mr. MacDougald's strategy, of using the accumulated surpluses in Argus plus some borrowed money to acquire more shares of companies he thought were undervalued, by borrowing copiously instead of sparingly.) These traits are evident throughout Mr. Siklos' book. Those who want to get the measure of Conrad Black would do well to pay close attention to part 1 of the book, as it describes Black's return to the station of a newspaper proprietor after learning much about financing and asset management at Argus, later folded into Hollinger Inc.

I read the original version when it first came out, and can vouch for the claim that it is "expanded and updated." If you're interested in Conrad Black, you may wind up reading this book a few times, not only once.