Memories of overcompensation.

• Author: Brown, Greg
• Position: Rese

The Accidental Investment Banker by Jonathan A. Knee Oxford University Press US$26.00

There's something disingenuous and oddly off-putting about business memoirs. Usually, the author claims to be an outsider, above the idiocy or lack of moral compass that surrounds him. Yet he certainly doesn't hold back from taking the huge paychecks, glamorous international trips and the attendant power that comes with the big job. Jonathan Knee is no exception, in this wide-ranging recounting of his years at investment bank Goldman Sachs and later at archrival Morgan Stanley.

Perhaps Knee is an outsider, having been recruited from United Airlines to his first position at famously clubby Goldman, in London. Yet he does a good job of closely and carefully recalling the personalities that guided him through Wall Street as the Internet and telecom stock bubbles drove hundreds of millions of dollars through the hands of characters who are, according to Knee's recollections, craven and certifiably insane, brilliant, or both. Bosses are either Type A maniacs who measure every success and failure in personal terms, or they are genuinely nice guys who shouldn't be in banking, i.e., people with whom he is probably still friends or does business.

Things get more vague when we enter the Internet boom and Knee is obliged by history to describe events and people with whom he clearly had much less contact. He presents a nice, well-written summary of the rise of Morgan Stanley tech-stock analyst Mary Meeker and of Frank Quattrone, later of Credit Suisse First Boston, who was the eye of the storm when the telecom bust set in, soon after the Internet stock collapse. He begins and ends the book, too, with a labored description of the battle for the soul of Morgan Stanley, led by the "grumpy old men" who eventually ousted Philip Purcell, the Dean Witter CEO who led the...