King of Capital

David Carey and John E. Morris chart how Blackstone and other private equity firms changed from gamblers and hostile-takeover raiders into disciplined investors wary of risk. They set this against the banks of the period, among them Lehman, Bear Stearns, Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, UBS, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, which took on reckless risk and heavy leverage and pushed the economy toward disaster. The authors open up the workings of a long secretive firm that had been the personal domain of Steve Schwarzman and Peter Peterson, and show how Blackstone and a few rivals came to control companies worldwide and to compete with the biggest Wall Street banks. They argue that private equity points to how finance will work.

Bogdan Iordache, co-founder of How to Web, included it in his list of recommended books on business and technology.