The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

There is a somewhat contradictory message in this excellent and by no means dated study of the three Morgan-affiliated banks JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Morgan Grenfell from their founding to the early 1990s, when the book was published
It’s clear the author, Ron Chernow, was horrified by the brazen greed exhibited by the bankers in such legendary deals as the attempted LBO leveraged buy out of RJR Nabisco in 1988 and the London Guinness scandal of the same decade, when Morgan Grenfell was forced by Margaret Thatcher personally to fire its top three managers for share manipulation.
Greed-wise, little has changed. But despite the temptation, it’s not the ethical lapses...