Bloodsport

"Bloodsport is the story of the creation of America's deal culture and the battle for control of America's corporations. Told through the fascinating, complex, and often-flawed characters who created a new era, it begins as the 60's are ending with the rise of the conglomerates, those vast assemblages of corporate assets. It rolls through the crisis-wracked 70's and the birth of the hostile deal, then careens into the 80's when the deal culture of mergers and acquisitions is truly unleashed, producing a Hobbesian corporate landscape that threatened the most formidable of corporations. The 90's see backlash, retrenchment and rethinking. The new century brings bubbles and deregulation, ending in disaster. And following a quiet period after the financial crash of 2008, we are witnessing the full-throated battle once again as companies and peoples' lives are moved around as casually as piece on a Monopoly game board. Since the first hostile deal in 1975, mergers and acquisitions have unleashed powerful forces and set off a revolution in who controls and governs American corporations. The rise of the deal raiders ushered in a world where literally no company was safe. Year after year, blockbuster deals unfolded, each more spectacular or predatory than the next. Many were hostile, most were complicated, the majority were dead on arrival. Together, they tell a story about money and power and the creation of a new era in business. "-- "Bloodsport is the story of how the mania for corporate deals and mergers all began...how power lawyers Joe Flom and Marty Lipton, major Wall Street players Felix Rohatyn and Bruce Wasserstein, prominent jurists, and shrewd ideologues provided the ... energy that drove the corporate elite into a less cozy Hobbesian world...with total dollar volume in the trillions. ... Four questions whose force remains undiminished: Are shareholders the "owners"? Should control be exerted by autonomous CEOs or is [that] illegitimate and inefficient? Is the primary purpose of corporations to generate jobs and create prosperity for the masses and the nation?, or is it simply to maximize the wealth of shareholders?"--