Bloodsport: When Ruthless Dealmakers, Shrewd Ideologues, and Brawling Lawyers Toppled the Corporate Establishment

by Robert Teitelman

The epic battle of the fascinating, flawed figures behind America's deal culture and their fight over who controls and who benefits from the immense wealth of American corporations.

Bloodsport is the story of how the mania for corporate deals and mergers all began. The riveting tale of how power lawyers Joe Flom and Marty Lipton, major Wall Street players Felix Rohatyn and Bruce Wasserstein, prominent jurists, and shrewd ideologues in academic garb provided the intellectual firepower, creativity, and energy that drove the corporate elite into a less cozy, Hobbesian world.

With total dollar volume in the trillions, the zeal for the deal continues unabated to this day. Underpinning this explosion in mergers and acquisitions -- including hostile takeovers -- are four questions that radically disrupted corporate ownership in the 1970s, whose force remains

Are shareholders the sole "owners" of corporations and the legitimate source of power?
Should control be exercised by autonomous CEOs or is their assumption of power illegitimate and inefficient?
Is the primary purpose of the corporation to generate jobs and create prosperity for the masses and the nation?
Or is it simply to maximize the wealth of shareholders?

This battle of ideas became the "bloodsport" of American business. It set in motion the deal-making culture that led to the financialization of the economy and it is the backstory to ongoing debates over competitiveness, job losses, inequality, stratospheric executive pay, and who "owns" America's corporations.

Genres: Business, Finance, Nonfiction, History

432 pages, Hardcover

Published April 5, 2016

Reviews

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

An exhaustive introduction to the intellectual and historical underpinnings of M&A in the 1980s. It’ll be quite a slog for the uninitiated, but too much of a recap for those with a professional or academic background in the material. Teitelman also misses out on a sterling opportunity to compare the 1980s LBO wave to modern debates about activism.

[Mike Adeleke · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book profiles the rise of M&A and "deal culture" in America. It's characters include the legendary Flom, Lipton, Perelman, and Wasserstein. These men built modern day mergers & acquisitions and were apart of some of the largest business transactions in history.

[300HP · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit too academic to be interesting, and too much bashing of Jensen.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Being fairly new to the M&A world, I see a lot of benefit from what I learned reading this book. A true history of M&A, focusing on its 1960s roots through the 90s, that recognized the cast of characters that made it all happen.

[BLACK CAT · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mergers and acquisitions true stories and its main characters as well as legal/fiscal framework evolution.