A glittering cocktail party at London’s Haymarket Hotel on November 4 celebrated the launch of the book Too big to fail by the New York Times’s Andrew Ross Sorkin.
Providing a fascinating fly-on-the-wall perspective on the frenzied negotiations between Wall Street and the regulators before and after Lehman’s collapse last September, the book is the product of hundreds of hours of off-the-record interviews with sources close to the action. But not a single source in the 352 page book has been identified. Unguarded comments made in moments of extreme stress pour forth in the book – the result of large, open-plan offices with speakerphones. Given the unflattering light in which many of the high-profile protagonists in the chaos emerge, Ross Sorkin would appear to be someone to keep on the right side of. The London cocktail party, at which the author was present to sign copies of the book, was hosted by Houlihan Lokey – perhaps mindful of the chance of a sequel?