Wall Street Meat

December 1, 2003
When Kessler interviewed for an analyst's position at Paine Webber in 1986, he wasn't even sure what the job entailed, but would soon learn there were "absolutely no qualifications whatsoever" for the responsibility of telling investors how to build their stock portfolios. He did happen to meet the right people, however: he palled around with Jack Grubman and then, at a subsequent job at Morgan Stanley, worked with Frank Quattrone and Mary Meeker—three analysts who later acquired varying levels of fame and notoriety during the boom-and-bust market of the late 1990s, as they were accused of deliberately recommending stocks from tech companies they knew to be overvalued. Henry Blodget was also implicated in the ensuing scandal, but despite his prominence on the cover, he has no substantial presence in this story, just a few cameos well after Kessler left Wall Street to run an investment firm in California. The subtitular implication that Wall Street "chewed up" these figures is also misleading; the men were at the top of their game when they were forced out, while Meeker has at this writing suffered nothing more than slight damage to her reputation. Kessler's denigration of her as a "clueless" rookie who became a technology "cheerleader" risks overstating the case against her as a means of pumping up the reputation of otherwise "pure analysts." False modesty and clunky dialogue do little to enhance a story that relies too heavily on Kessler's former proximity to now-famous people, while his analysis of their legal woes rarely advances beyond the superficial. Readers seeking insight into the blurring of the boundaries between investment bankers and stock analysts should wait for a book that tells that story directly, with a fuller perspective.