Curated playlist
American chief executives of financial services companies
- Leon BlackLeon Black paid $119.9 million in May 2012 for a pastel by Edvard Munch, one of the four versions of The Scream. At that moment, no work of art had ever sold for a higher price. The buyer was an American private equity investor, born on…
- Michael BloombergMichael Bloomberg was on the ballot in New York City's Republican mayoral primary when voting opened on the morning of the 11th of September 2001. Later that day, officials postponed the primary because of the attacks on the city. The…
- Sam Bankman-FriedSam Bankman-Fried played League of Legends while pitching investors. Sequoia later put in more than $200 million.
- Warren BuffettWarren Buffett's yearbook photo called him a future stockbroker. He was seventeen and liked math.
- George SorosAt 14, George Soros posed as the Christian godson of a government official to survive the Nazi occupation of Hungary.
- Steve BannonSteve Bannon still earns money every time Seinfeld airs. His bank took a stake in five shows instead of a fee.
- Howard LutnickHoward Lutnick was taking his young son to kindergarten on the morning of the 11th of September 2001. That errand kept him out of the North Tower of the World Trade Center, where his firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, had its headquarters. His…
- Bernie MadoffBernie Madoff told his own sons in December 2008 that the fund he ran was "just one big lie." Bernard Lawrence Madoff was an American financier, born in 1938, who had once served as chairman of the Nasdaq stock exchange. He admitted to…
- Nelson PeltzNelson Peltz is an American billionaire investor who once planned to spend his life teaching people to ski in Oregon. Instead, he became one of the best-known activist investors in corporate America, a man who buys a stake in a famous…
- Jamie DimonIn November 1998, Sandy Weill asked Jamie Dimon to resign from Citigroup. Dimon was forty-two and had no plan.
- Jim SimonsJim Simons, born James Harris Simons, once explained his dislike of publicity by borrowing a line from Benjamin the Donkey in Animal Farm. "God gave me a tail to keep off the flies. But I'd rather have had no tail and no flies. That's kind…