Crash of the Titans

“Eminently readable and convincing…There’s great value to be gained in the detail that Farrell reveals.” —Salon “An exhaustive reconstruction of how Merrill Lynch & Co. sealed its own fate bybecoming more bullish on bonuses than on America.” —James Pressley, Bloomberg                                                                                                                         “Farrell weaves his facts into a story…piling detail upon detail to sketch the innerworkings of Merrill Lynch, which he calls the Wall Street firm that made it possible foraverage Americans to reap handsome returns in the stock market.” —USA Today “The…financial crisis’s answer to Game Change–John Heilemann and Mark Halperin’stattle-filled bestseller about the 2008 Presidential election–Farrell shows that… seemingly trivial matters became the obsessions of Wall Street executives as the subprime contagion spread.” —BusinessWeek “Immaculately reported…Farrell has found one of the biggest untold stories of the [financial crisis] drama.” —Financial Times “Farrell tells a story based on hundreds of hours of interviews that builds like a hurricane.” —Forbes.com

GREG FARRELL is a correspondent for the Financial Times. In January 2009, he broke the news that Merrill Lynch had paid out its 2008 bonuses a month ahead of schedule, in December, even though Merrill was in the process of losing \(28 billion for the year, and Bank of America needed an extra \)20 billion in taxpayer funds to complete its acquisition of the firm. That story sparked an investigation by New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo. Greg is a past winner of the American Business Press’s Jesse Neal Award for investigative reporting and a recipient of the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship for business journalism. He earned a BA from Harvard University and an MBA from the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University.