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F.I.A.S.C.O.
By
Frank Partnoy
Penguin USA, 1999 - 283 pages
Now that there is a proven market for recent financial
history/humor books, after the stunning success of Liars
Poker, Predator’s
Ball and Den
of Thieves, this book is another one of
these books that tries to emulate the financial stories from
the 1980’s.
To my knowledge it is the first book to take on the derivatives
trading industry, which is extremely volatile and can be the
most risky sector of the financial markets, if you choose to
speculate in it. More
importantly, there will eventually be a derivatives disaster
outside of the Long-term Capital one that occurred a couple of
years ago.
This book, as I read it, is highly sensationalist.
I have worked in the financial service industry with
institutions and chose to leave the industry about a year ago.
Here are my thoughts on this book as it relates to the
derivatives markets.
1. Mr. Partnoy gives a high level description of
some of the transactions that he was involved in
2. He seems to be indicting the market in
derivatives, which I disagree on since he is dealing with
institutions, which already should have a fiduciary
responsibility to their clients.
If they are dumb and allow an investment bank to
"rips their face off” as Partnoy claims then they
shouldn’t be 1) in those financial products or (2) doing
business with them. It
is their choice!
3. From the reading it seemed as though Partnoy
doesn’t understand his role in the machine known as Wall
Street. He is a
salesmen, pure and simple.
He gets paid to ring the register, nothing more.
Other people construct the deals and he is the marketer
to clients. If he
makes clients money they should come back more and more.
Often times, there are MANY other factors that cause
business to vary from firm to firm.
LOTS of different agendas/goals in mind.
4. Some of his anecdotes, particularly those in
which he discusses the atmosphere in an investment bank around
bonus time (pg.40 - 42, 202 - 205), are pretty amusing and
dead on accurate.
5. The author's descriptions of some of his deals
are clearly told from a junior banker's perspective, but they
do a good job of putting forth what was being done, how it was
being done, what everyone's perceived incentives for the
transaction were, the work required to get the deal done, what
kind of money, and importantly what kind of fees were
involved.
In conclusion, like all books written by former investment
bankers the book contains liberally sprinkled anecdotes
regarding job interviews from hell, the ridiculous daily
escapades that can occur on a trading floor, strip clubs, the
lack of personal lives, gambling trips and other stories which
could easily have been pulled from the pages of Mr. Lewis's
book or "Monkey Business" by Rolfe and Troob. Folks,
not all folks on Wall Street are like that but a HUGE
percentage are. Nothing
wrong with that lifestyle but it is a choice everyone is free
to make. Hope this
helps everyone.
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