Black Edge

Nominated for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Nominated for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction Amazon Top 5 Business Books of 2017 'A prodigious feat of reporting' - Malcolm Gladwell ‘Black Edge has the grip of a thriller … Everyone should read this book’ - David Grann, New York Times bestselling author of THE LOST CITY OF Z How do super-rich bankers get away with it? There is a powerful new class of billionaire financiers in the world, who use their phenomenal wealth to write their own rules and laws. Chief among them is Steven Cohen, a Wall Street legend, and the basis for Damian Lewis's character in BILLIONS, who built his hedge fund into a $15 billion empire on the basis of wizard-like stock trading, and who flies to work by helicopter and owns one of the largest private art collections in the world. But his iconic status was shattered when his fund became the target of a sprawling FBI investigation into insider trading, charged with using illegal inside information – or ‘black edge’ – to beat the market. His firm, SAC Capital, was ultimately indicted and pled guilty to charges of securities and wire fraud, and paid record criminal and civil fines of nearly $2 billion. But even as the company bearing his name pled guilty, Cohen himself was never charged, and is free to start trading publicly again from January 2018. Black Edge offers a revelatory look at the grey zone in which so much of Wall Street functions, and a window into the transformation of the worldwide economy. With meticulous reporting and powerful storytelling, this is a riveting, true-life legal thriller that takes readers inside the US government’s pursuit of Cohen and his employees, and raises urgent questions about the power and wealth of those who sit at the pinnacle of the financial world .

Nominated for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Nominated for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction Amazon Top 5 Business Books of 2017 'A prodigious feat of reporting' - Malcolm Gladwell ‘Black Edge has the grip of a thriller … Everyone should read this book’ - David Grann, New York Times bestselling author of THE LOST CITY OF Z How do super-rich bankers get away with it? There is a powerful new class of billionaire financiers in the world, who use their phenomenal wealth to write their own rules and laws. Chief among them is Steven Cohen, a Wall Street legend, and the basis for Damian Lewis's character in BILLIONS, who built his hedge fund into a $15 billion empire on the basis of wizard-like stock trading, and who flies to work by helicopter and owns one of the largest private art collections in the world. But his iconic status was shattered when his fund became the target of a sprawling FBI investigation into insider trading, charged with using illegal inside information – or ‘black edge’ – to beat the market. His firm, SAC Capital, was ultimately indicted and pled guilty to charges of securities and wire fraud, and paid record criminal and civil fines of nearly $2 billion. But even as the company bearing his name pled guilty, Cohen himself was never charged, and is free to start trading publicly again from January 2018. Black Edge offers a revelatory look at the grey zone in which so much of Wall Street functions, and a window into the transformation of the worldwide economy. With meticulous reporting and powerful storytelling, this is a riveting, true-life legal thriller that takes readers inside the US government’s pursuit of Cohen and his employees, and raises urgent questions about the power and wealth of those who sit at the pinnacle of the financial world .

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • "An essential exposé of our times-a work that reveals the deep rot in our financial system . . . Everyone should read this book."-David Grann, author of Killers of the Flower Moon ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR-The New York Times and The Economist • Finalist for the New York Public Library's Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism The hedge fund industry changed Wall Street. Its pioneers didn't lay railroads, build factories, or invent new technologies. Rather, they made their billions through financial speculation, by placing bets in the market that turned out to be right more often than not. In hedge fund circles, Steven A. Cohen was revered as one of the greatest traders who ever lived. But that image was shattered when his fund, SAC Capital, became the target of a seven-year government investigation. Prosecutors labeled SAC a "magnet for market cheaters" whose culture encouraged the relentless pursuit of "edge"-and even "black edge," which is inside information-and the firm was ultimately indicted and pleaded guilty to charges related to a vast insider trading scheme. Cohen, himself, however, was never charged. Black Edge is a riveting legal thriller that raises urgent questions about the power and wealth of those who sit at the pinnacle of high finance and how they have reshaped the economy. Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award "A modern version of Moby-Dick, with wiretaps rather than harpoons."-Jennifer Senior, The New York Times "If you liked James B. Stewart's Den of Thieves, Sheelah Kolhatkar's thrilling Black Edge should be next on your reading list."-The Wall Street Journal "Excellent."-The Economist "A true-life thriller with Shakespearian stakes . . . Her chilling account of a blighted industry is as mesmerizing as a human story as it is as a financial one."-Fortune "A tour de force of groundbreaking reporting and brilliant storytelling."-Jeffrey Toobin, New York Times bestselling author of American Heiress