Merchants of Debt [antikvár]

Preface n 1989, partway through the adventures that ultimately led to this book, I got an unusual phone call from my sister. During a business trip to Baltimore, Nanci told me, she had met an executive at Maryland Cup Co. who was looking for new managers to hire. The job sounded interesting, but my sister had one big concern. Maryland Cup had just undergone a leveraged buyout. Was it a good idea, she wanted to know, to work for an LBO company? Good question. From 1982 onward, I had written repeatedly about buyouts for The Wall Street Journal, chronicling the growth and turbulence of this new kind of high-debt takeover. What had begun as a casual interest had turned by 1989 into a specialty that bordered on obsession. I had studied the financing of buyouts, and knew which major companies had been acquired this way; I followed the arguments, pro and con, concerning the effect of buyouts on America's economy. Now, however, background financial data didn't matter; neutral journalistic analysis wouldn't suffice. Either Nanci should take the job, or she shouldn't. After about a day of hard thinking, I offered my sister the following advice: "Find out if you'll be in the small circle of top managers that gets stock ownership in a buyout company. If so, sign up right away. It'll be exciting work and may make a lot of money for you, but most of all you'U feel in charge of your own destiny at a very exciting time in a company's life. And if you can't get part-ownership, don't touch the job. You're