The Last Partnerships: Inside the Great Wall Street Dynasties

by Charles R. Geisst

They laid the foundations of American finance and defined the American brand of capitalism. They bankrolled wars, were the impetus behind the building of the first transcontinental railroad system, and fueled a fledgling nation’s grandiose dreams of empire. S&M Allen, J. P. Morgan & Co., Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers...they were the great Wall Street partnerships, and for well over a century, through a combination of financial genius, political chicanery, and the audacity of Caesars, they wielded unprecedented influence over the business, financial, and political landscapes of a nation. The Last Partnerships combines rigorous scholarship with journalism at its best to present a panoramic history of the rise and fall of the great financial houses—from the “Yankee Bankers,” at the turn of the 19th century, up to Goldman Sachs’ historic IPO in 1999—tracing their origins, their successes and failures over the years, and the reasons for their ultimate demise. The Last Partnerships is must-reading for history buffs and everyone interested in the world of finance behind the business-page headlines.

Genres: History, Finance, Buisness, Economics, Business, Biography

Hardcover

First published March 8, 2001

Reviews

[Frank Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

A broad overview of some of the greatest names that have graced the doorways of Wall Street over the last two hundred years. While the book is a occassionaly plodding and leaves various questions unanswered, it gives insights into the most famous firms and financiers who helped build the United States.

What I found particularly interesting is that several of the more famous (or, should I say, infamous) firms have either crumbled or effectively collapsed only to be resurrected. Kidder Peabody and Goldman Sachs are two that stand out here. But then there is the spectacular rise and fall of Jay Cooke and his firm - only to return in a new form via his son-in-law Charles Barney, the precursor to Smith Barney which is now tentatively hanging on as a brand name of Morgan Stanley Smith Barney (check back in six months to see if still exists).

Also of interest is how all partnerships, if they survived as independent entities, eventually moved to become publicly traded companies. The need for capital to grow to meet the global demand for access to the capital markets. Private partnerships today are most seen in private equity and hedge fund firms -- but even they are moving to become publicly traded. In short, the powerful partnerships as we knew them in the golden age of American finance are long gone.

[Patrick · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is about the histories of the great investment banking partnerships on Wall Street and how they evolved into the companies that exist today (Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Shearson Lehman, Dean Witter, etc.). I think this is an interesting subject, but this book is poorly written. I felt like I was reading a college freshman term paper. The author constantly makes assertions but fails to back them up with solid evidence or statistics. Most of the sentences are written in the passive voice, which never used to annoy me but which I found absolutley maddening here. Most frustratingly, the author constantly (at least twice a page) starts a paragraph with a topic sentence (usually a banal idea and poorly written at that) and then restates the exact same idea with slightly different wording rather than moving on to narrative that justfies the theme of his paragraph. Just a brutal reading experience. You can get the entire point of this book by reading the third paragraph of the conclusion. If the author had a decent editor, this book could have been about 150 pages rather than 300 or so, and would have been a much better book.

[Kelsey Youresosharp · Rating 1 out of 5]

Informational though dry.

[Ali Khan · Rating 5 out of 5]

it is a good book to read