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Book Description

Selected as one of the Top 10 Business Books by Booklist

"The Last Partnerships is an enormously enjoyable read."

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 --United Press International

The Last Partnerships narrates the rise and fall of the great financial houses--from the "Yankee Bankers" at the turn of the 19th century, up to Goldman Sachs's historic IPO in 1999-- tracing their origins, their successes and failures over the years, and the reasons for their ultimate demise.

From Publishers Weekly

Despite the subtitle, this book doesn't throw wide the back-room doors of major investment banking and brokerage firms like Merrill Lynch and Salomon Brothers. Instead, it provides a general history of Wall Street, organized in chronological chapters, each featuring two famous houses. The first chapter covers 1812 to 1873, focusing on Clark Dodge and Jay Cooke. The last chapter runs from the 1930s to the present, featuring Lazard Freres and Goldman Sachs. Most of the material can be found in the author's previous works, 100 Years of Wall Street and Wall Street: A History. This reorganization might have yielded new insights had it shown how certain firms helped shape their time and place, and vice versa, or perhaps if it had focussed on the passing of the torch from era to era. As it stands, Ron Chernow's The Death of the Banker and Martin Mayer's The Bankers and even Geisst's previous works are more compelling and better written. Still, Geisst has more understanding of finance than most popular financial historians; despite the drawbacks of this Wall Street history, it represents the various firms fairly and aptly.

From Booklist

Geisst is the author of Monopolies in America: Empire Builders and Their Enemies from Jay Gould to Bill Gates (2000) and Wall Street: A History (1997). He now turns his attention to the investment banking houses that helped finance American growth. Although the names of these financial dynasties are still familiar, the partnerships on which they were built have ceased to exist. From the War of 1812 until the end of World War II, however, they were conferred celebrity status and were also the "subjects of folklore, envy, and political vilification, and notorious symbols of wealth and power." They sold Union war bonds to fund the Civil War, financed the first transatlantic steamship service, supplied capital for industry, and helped build this country's cultural institutions. Geisst profiles Clark Dodge and Jay Cooke; the Seligmans, Lehman Brothers, and Kuhn Loeb; Brown Brothers Harriman and August Belmont; Kidder Peabody and Dillon Read; J. P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley; Merrill Lynch and E. F. Hutton; Salomon Brothers and Drexel Burnham; and Goldman Sachs and Lazard Freres.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 David Rouse

From Library Journal

Geisst (Wall Street: A History; Monopolies in America: Empire Builders and their Enemies from Jay Gould to Bill Gates) here provides a history of U.S. investment banking over the past 200 years. As the title indicates, investment banking has shifted from partnership activity to corporate ownership. Geisst creditably describes the forces at work in the creation of capital, providing some sociological context through ethnicity and gender issues. Geisst accounts for a number of factors that have caused investment banking to undergo a sea change: increasingly high dollar amounts, the ability of inexperienced traders to bankrupt firms, and the demise of relationship banking. He shows how cutthroat competition changed investment banking from a business based on relationships to one based on the deal itself. This book's appeal will be limited to those interested in financial history.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Steven Silkunas, Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, Philadelphia

Book Dimension:

length: (cm)22 　　　 　　　　　 　width:(cm) 14.5