MIKE COOPER

Fri, 13 Apr 12 at 12:41   | No Comments Yet

Wall Street Journal Review of CLAWBACK

 
Clawback gets a great review from John Bussey at the WSJ today:

DAYS OF KLOUT AND CLAWBACK

It’s time to check out the Zeitgeist. Two new books, in different ways, catch some of the current buzz about the business world.

One describes the marketing revolution fired by social media … The other plays to public vengeance. With the liberty that only over-the-top fiction can take, it describes an errant Wall Street, still unreconstructed after the 2008 financial crisis, turning on itself. Did someone say catharsis?

[In] a financial thriller titled “Clawback” by Mike Cooper, the protagonist wants the opposite—anonymity. Silas Cade is a gun-for-hire, and when a string of well-known financiers mysteriously meet untimely ends, Silas is called in to find out why.

Clawback means taking back money or benefits because of special circumstances. It got plenty of currency during the 2008 financial crisis, when taxpayers were bailing out Wall Street and wondering whether redress might reside in those fat compensation packages the executives had already banked. Shareholders have since pressured such firms as Goldman and Morgan Stanley to expand clawback provisions in compensation packages to discourage excessive risk-taking.

Mike Cooper is the pen name of [redacted], who says “just the notion of a hit-man accountant made me laugh. And then the financial crisis came along and I had in the box a character and a setting, so it just seemed to be a good time to go.”

This book is a fast-read suspension of disbelief that benefits from Mr. Cooper’s background in finance. It includes a wild, unintended shootout among hedge-fund and bank executives that’s another reminder of the Darwinian days of 2008.

“Clawback” will appeal to anyone who thinks that many CEOs of big companies still don’t earn what they get paid and that Wall Street is still without parental supervision.

It’s easy to enjoy …

Read the entire piece here.