William Cohan

William Cohan spent 17 years as an investment banker at Lazard Frères, Merrill Lynch, and JPMorgan before becoming a journalist and author. His books include "House of Cards" (Bear Stearns collapse), "Money and Power" (Goldman Sachs), "The Last Tycoons" (Lazard), and "Power Failure" (GE Capital). Each combines meticulous reporting with his insider understanding of investment banking culture. Cohan writes for publications including The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, and Puck, and is known for unsparing portraits of financial institutions and their cultures. His investment banking background gives his journalism an insider's understanding of the compensation structures, risk cultures, and internal politics that drive decision-making at major financial institutions — context that is typically absent from outsider accounts. His reconstruction of Bear Stearns's final weeks, based on interviews with dozens of participants, remains the most detailed account of how a major investment bank's collapse unfolds in real time, capturing both the operational mechanics of a repo funding run and the human dynamics of organizational failure under stress.