Internet Fun Read: 10 Real Gordon Gekkos
When the first Wall Street came out in 1987, and people heard Gordon Gekko say those famous lines “Greed is good,” everyone on the actual Wall Street went apeshit. “Finally,” they said, “someone is validating? how awful human beings we can be!” Unfortunately, instead of having the style and panache of the original Gekko, they looked like this guy:
That’s , former CEO and chairman of Bear Stearns and number 4 on the amazing list over at AskMen.com listing the top 10 Real Life Gordon Gekkos. Here’s the rest of their entry:
As the former CEO and chairman of Bear Stearns, he led the company to collapse with incredibly risky investments. When Bear Stearns’s stock crashed, he sold his stake in the company for $61 million and jumped ship. That is about one billion dollars less than his net worth was estimated at before the collapse.
Almost every major disaster Bear Stearns stepped into happened while Cayne was away playing in world-class bridge tournaments.
Cayne was distinctly named by CNBC as one of the “Worst American CEOs of All Time.”
With the sequel — which somehow stars Shia LeBeouf, who apparently has it written in his contract that he has to star as a young up-and-comer in every 20-years-in-the-waiting sequel around — just around the corner, it’s worth catching up on these real life assholes and seeing what they’re all up to. (Spoiler: Most of them are behind bars.) Hooray for capitalism!
About Rick Mosely Rick is the editor for TSB magazine.