DIRTY ROTTEN CEOS HOW Business Leaders Are Fleecing America

内容简介

Chief executives of America's large corporations are the Knights of the Round Table in a world where money is king. But today's CEOs are being exposed for cooking the books, firing workers to make quarterly earnings, and becoming very, very rich at the expense of the rest of us. Respected business writer William G. Flanagan goes beyond the headlines to show what led to one of the biggest economic fallouts in history. Here is a fascinating account of financial malfeasance at the highest level, of telecom cowboys and corrupt lobbyists, of multi-millionaire businessmen cashing in their stock options without risking a dime of their own money. Behind-the-scenes looks into Enron, AOL Time Warner, WorldCom, Tyco, Qwest, and others reveal the egregious blunders, risky strategies, and unparalleled greed that caused giant corporations to collapse. Along the way, there are up-close profiles of the executives who stuffed their deep pockets while destroying investor trust -- men such as Ken Lay, Gerald Levin, Jack Grubman, Sandy Weill, Jeffrey Skilling, and others.

目录

Author's Note ix 1 Welcome to Greed World 1 2 Follow the Money 11 3 Those Stunning CEO Paychecks 22 4 The Stock Option: The CEO's License to Steal 34 5 "The World's Leading Company" 52 6 The Man Who Knew Too Much 62 7 How Enron Held Up the West 78 8 Running Out of Tricks 93 9 "I Got Off the Titanic in Ireland ..." 105 10 The Shredding of Arthur Andersen 119 11 The Telecom Cowboys 132 12 The Biggest Bankruptcy in History 143 13 Gerald Levin: When in Doubt, Merge 154 14 Dennis Kozlowski: Takeout from Tyco 169 15 Adelphia: The Rigas Family Piggy Bank 186 16 Joseph Nacchio: In Qwest of Riches 199 17 Investors Finally Get Fed Up 216 18 Sanford Weill: The Prince and the Banker 231 19 Jack Grubman: Analyze This 244 20 Preventing More Fraud: Modest Proposals 259 Epilogue 265 Bibliography 282 Index 284