King of Capital: The Remarkable Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Steve Schwarzman and Blackstone Paperback – February 7, 2012

Love this book, very good read on leverage

Very informative read on many of the deals that made Blackstone, and the thinking behind them. Anyone in Finance would likely appreciate the details.

Vibrant gold lettering set against the black and white of Grand Central Station catches the reader and brings a grand introduction to a well written, exhaustively researched and highly informative book by David Carey and John Morris. Though focused on Blackstone Group and its founders, Steve Schwarzman and Pete Peterson, private equity, its growth and importance in the America's financial architecture for the last twenty-five years is the book's centerpiece. The authors are well versed in the language of private equity and take the time to explain the lingo and structure of many of the deals, Blackstone's mother's milk. Especially interesting is the Celanese AG take over and how this American firm's ingenious risk taking and financial legerdemain avoided the staid German corporate laws and brought about its rebirth in America. Tony James' hiring as the new and needed CEO demonstrated Schwarzman's ability and flexibility to allow the stage to be shared by others for the good of the company and its partners. Blackstone's IPO and its telling fascinates as well. Avoiding the gushing of many business writers who focus on Wall Street's limousine lifestyle, Carey and Morris focus on the business of private equity by dissecting the many deals, and, by doing so, justifying private equity's importance in this country's fortunes and future.

This book is a fairly quick read that lays out the history of Blackstone and the origins of some of its spinoffs. Overall, I would say this book reads like a reporter's account of the facts of the situation. It does not have anywhere near the level of detail of an insider or someone that had intimate knowledge of the doings or workings of this firm. For that reason, i was a little disappointed with this book as it did not describe what has made this one of the great players in finance. Sure there is discussion of the leadership's obsessions with this or that and some color of the roles some of the senior players had in the direction of the firm, but I struggled to identify what was the critical element, other than the leadership's, or more specifically Schwartzman's, relentless pursuit of success that made this a great firm. It certainly appeared the author relied a great deal or was heavily influenced by Schwartzman's account and as such I was left wanting and believing as with so many other books written by reporters, not industry experts or insiders, that they lacked an understanding of the true dynamic within the organization. In the author's defense, there is a fair amount of criticism of the firm throughout the book. The most critical part revealed the culture of the firm which is described as a revolving door where talented individuals are not nurtured, but sooner or later get frustrated and trade away. Not too unusual on Wall Street, but the author describes this turnover as far more excessive than normal and given some of the talent that left, it is pretty hard to believe Blackstone has achieved all it has given some of these departures. Its a quick read that would be helpful to understand the firm if you are doing business with them, but this certainly would not qualify as a definitive account of this remarkable firm.

This is one of the best-written books on the subject of finance (to use the term in its broadest sense) I have read. What makes this particular book a how-to on this sort of literature is simply this: everything in it is what as a reader I would like to know, and nothing else. The authors review the history of Blackstone through the eyes of the people who have made Blackstone what it is today. It paints a clear picture of the main characters, their background and motivations; competitive and regulatory landscape; the structures (sometimes fairly complex but never beyond comprehension) of the actual deals involved, as well as profits and losses. However, the story always moves at a very brisk pace, never getting bogged down in any more detail than strictly necessary. That, in my opinion, is the most impressive achievement of this book. I read the whole thing in three days because I simply couldn't put it down. Reading through the notes, I found out that it took three laborious years to write it. I came away feeling a personal sense of gratitude to the authors for their work and regret that there was no more pages left to read.