The White Sharks of Wall Street

Long before Michael Milken was using junk bonds to finance corporate takeovers, Thomas Mellon Evans used debt, cash, and the tax code to obtain control of more than eighty American companies. Long before investors began to lobby for "shareholder's rights", Evans was demanding that public companies be run only for their shareholders -- not for their employees, their executives, or their surrounding communities. To some, Evans's merciless style presaged much that is wrong with corporate life today. To others, he intuitively knew what was needed to keep America competitive in the wake of a global wax.

In The White Sharks of Wall Street, New York Times investigative reporter Diana Henriques provides the first biography of this pivotal figure in American business. She portrays the other pioneering corporate raiders of the Postwar period, such as Robert Young and Louis Wolfson, and shows how these men learned from and advanced each others' tactics. She reaches beyond the business arena to tally the tragic personal cost of Evans's pursuit of success and the family dynasty that shattered when his sons were driven by his own stubbornness and pride to become his rivals. The result is a fascinating portrait of an extraordinary man whose career blazed across the sky and then sank into obscurity -- but not before he had provided the template for how American business would operate for the next four decades.