Memos From the Chairman
I happened to be wandering around the basement of the Strand a few weeks ago, and found a copy of Memos From the Chairman, a collection of memos written by Ace Greenberg, during his tenure as Bear Stearn’s CEO, which was later collected and published by the same people that do the page-a-day calendars.
Which, if you sit down for an hour and change, you can get through pretty easily.
It gives a number of momentary snapshots of a financial firm as it goes from being a midsized brokerage to the ginormous financial firm that just entered the history books.
Highlights include:
- Ace Greenberg completely making up statistics at whim to support any point that he might have.
- The constant reminders to cut costs, to the point that they stopped ordering paper clips and rubber bands.
- An infatuation with a bizarrely named, fake philosopher named Haimchinkel Malintz Anaynikal, who really likes to cut costs.
- The repeatedly stated preference for PSD’s (poor, smart, desires to be rich) over MBA’s
Also of note is the forward of the book written by Warren Buffet. In his annual letter to shareholders, he is entertaining and relatively verbose. Not here. His opening is barely a page, and quite bland.
