Testosterone Inc: Tales of CEOs Gone Wild

by Christopher M. Byron

In Testosterone Tales of CEOs Gone Wild, bestselling author and New York Post columnist Chris Byron chronicles the Gatsby-like saga of the rise and fall of the celebrity CEO. During the height of the 1990s bull market, they were America’s new the heroes of business. They were our bold new leaders, cutting the fat, pushing for productivity, implementing visionary plans, and making strategic deals. When the bull market turned to bust and the applause turned to cat-calls, the world was shocked at the truth. Drenched in money and public acclaim, our CEO-heroes―mostly white, mostly male, mostly middle-aged―turned out to be not much different than a group of twenty-something rock stars―drunk on power and driven by sex, greed, and glamour. Testosterone Inc. goes behind the boardroom doors to show the serial affairs and marriages of these acquisitive corporate titans.  At the center of this story is Jack Welch, the biggest of America’s rock star CEOs and the former head of General Electric Co., surrounded by “mini-me” CEOs Ron Perelman of Revlon, Al Dunlap of Sunbeam, and Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco―all gone wild in public displays of consumption and predatory appetites writ large. Byron gets inside the bars where Welch liked to hang out and pick up women with his early “business soul mate” buddies. Byron hovers unseen at the elbow of Ron Perelman and his mistress aboard the Concorde for a week in Paris in his mistaken belief that his wife knows nothing about his secret affair. Byron peeks behind the curtains of a U.S. Army officers’ quarters to behold Al Dunlap horrifying his first wife, who claimed in her divorce action that Dunlap would point his knife at her and say, “I often wondered what human flesh tasted like.” Byron becomes a fly on the wall to chronicle the longing for respect and serial womanizing of Dennis Kozlowski. Frequently hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking, Testosterone Inc. follows the intertwined lives of these four corporate heroes, from childhood to their ultimate moments of glory and the crash-and-burn calamities that followed, as man’s age-old hunger for power, greed, and temptation undid them all.  From suicide to murder, from dysfunctional childhoods to dysfunctional marriages in adulthood, from business chutzpah to financial suicide, here is the ultimate untold business story of our what went on at century’s end, when testosterone got the best of businessmen everywhere, and CEOs went wild.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Aleksandr Voinov · Rating 1 out of 5]

Just not my thing (it should have been, which is why I bought it). I tried to read it, but the style and presentation grated, then I started skimming, hoping it would get better or more interesting/insightful. It's basically just gossip about horrible people in a style you'll love or hate. I didn't love it.

[Feng Ouyang · Rating 1 out of 5]

I only read the introduction. It doesn't sound like a book with any insight, must harsh yelling and whining.

[Eric · Rating 2 out of 5]

Victims of excessive testosterone, indeed? These guys are little better than Lothario dickheads! Although Byron's work does listen fairly well.

[Melissa Casey · Rating 1 out of 5]

The part he wrote about me and my family is completely inaccurate. He could not bother to even get the names correct.

[Sylvia Snowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Blends gossip and sex with hard-core business journalism. This book should be required reading for all business and economics majors. The group of men profiled were responsible for destroying the lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals, and thousands of American communities, through their slash and burn business strategies. Yet, we continue to worship the likes of Jack Welch today. In between the gossip, Christopher Byron offers excellent analyses of the overstuffed and conservative American corporations of the 1950s and 1960s, and how, in part, they caused their own demise by becoming targets of aggressive, money hungry executives who lacked any kind of moral ethos. Byron makes the interesting point, also, that while Wall Street worshiped these financial goons, blind to the coming disaster their work spelled for their corporations and the stock market, business writers were much more circumspect, and were largely ignored by investors and banks. He also makes the point that when a company panders solely to the stockholders, it sacrifices long term business development, along with its employees, management, and, I might add, its customers. A hard ass book for the unafraid reader of excellent business journalism.

[DW · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is not a thriller or a page-turner but it was interesting to see how greed, notions of invinciblity, excess, tons of cash, and an agressive set of gonads led to the demise or one CEO, the misery of two others, and the aptly-timed movements and ridiculously unimaginable fortune and success of a fourth (Jack Welch).

[keong nakal]

this, is my koko's book. i borrowed it years ago, have not yet read it. hahaha...

[Sarah Hovis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nonfiction about the extravagant lifestyles of CEO's. Good gossipy book.

[Adrienne · Rating 1 out of 5]

The beginning of this book was interesting, but I couldn’t finish it. Too discouraging.

[Raza Syed · Rating 3 out of 5]

Basically this can be retitled "CEOs Gone Wild !"

Very Informative, quite intriguing, fairly interesting, at times entertaining, and unfortunately sad look at the background, education, careers and personal lives of four of America's larger than life CEOs - Jack Welch, Al Dunlap, Ron Perlman and Dennis Kozlowski.

The author goes through their upbringings, their ever rotating crop of women, their sense of entitlement, their hyper aggressive personalities which fueled their work ethics, the business environment as well as the longest Bull Market in the US -these factors are described, analyzed and discussed quite thoroughly...

Fun and easy book to read.....