Great Business Stories

This is a guy whose father fled Lebanon with almost nothing and today is worth $120 billion. I examine how he built his fortune buying up distressed businesses during Mexico's economic collapse of the 1980s, and how a controversial privatisation deal for the national phone company turned him into the richest man in the world. I also look at the huge criticism he's faced for monopolistic pr...

This is a guy who grew up in a village in rural China with no running water and today is now worth $110 billion. I examine his relationship with Sam Bankman Fried- and his subsequent involvement in the multi billion dollar collapse of Bankman Fried’s company FTX. I also look at how he tried to keep Binance away from any type of regulation, and this ultimately led him to serve time in jail but then...

I nitially I had intended to do just 1 episode on Hyundai, focusing mainly on the car business and it’s current leadership, but the story of Ju-yung is just too remarkable to be consigned to a footnote- this is a guy who, from nothing, built a conglomerate that at it’s peak in the 90s was one of the biggest companies in the world, with revenues of $90 billion, 200,000 employees, operating in every...

Now, I’m not into fashion and I really didn’t know anything about Klein before I did my research for this episode and I found him to be such a fascinating character-how he, together with Ralph Lauren and Ann Klein, no relation, dragged American fashion out of the shadow of Paris and made it stand on its own two feet. How he didn’t do it on his own- Calvin Klein the business was always 2 people- Kl...

Sacks is a very interesting and powerful figure. He started his tech career with PayPal, and it was Sacks, together with other PayPal founders, who organised the coup that got Elon Musk fired as PayPal's CEO. He went on to start up Geni.com and Yammer, selling Yammer for $1.2 billion dollars. He then set up a venture firm and has risen to prominence through the All In podcast, and then in 2024...

This is a story that I’ve wanted to get to the bottom of for years- for those of you who aren’t aware of who Calvi is- he was known as God’s Banker- the guy who managed the vatican;s money back in the 70’s and early 80’s and who was found hanged under Blackfriars bridge in 1982, and here's an excerpt from the BBC on Calvi:  "Calvi was at the centre of an incredibly complex web of internat...

The edge in the title refers to an advantage that Cohen had over the rest of the market-because he is considered without doubt one of the best intuitive traders ever- good enough that he took home $3.5 billion last year, rich enough to lose more than $1.5 billion in the whole Gamestop short squeeze and shrug it off but is his wealth and success all down to skill or does he cross the line, as prose...

I chose this episode not only because it’s brilliant, but also because my youngest listener and favourite nephew has been bugging me to do the story of a leary for a long time now I’ll start with an excerpt from a profile the journalist Philip Watson did on O Leary: “Through a series of audacious business moves and a decidedly gunslinging approach to his opponents, Michael O Leary made Ryanair the...

I’ll open up with an excerpt from a fantastic New Yorker article on Altman: "Altman has a relentless will to power that, even among industrialists who put their names on spaceships, sets him apart- and according to an OpenAI board member: “He’s unconstrained by truth. He has two traits that are almost never seen in the same person. The first is a strong desire to please people, to be liked in...

I’m going to kick it off with this excerpt from Oliver Shah’s excellent book on Green called Damaged Goods : “Mr Toad-like in appearance, with a bulging belly and a mischievous grin, Green turned into a business celebrity, often spotted on the front row of fashion shows between Kate Moss and Anna Wintour. Nut-brown from the Riviera sun, his silver hair slicked back into a rat’s tail, he relished t...

I’m breaking up Ackman’s story into three, maybe even four parts because, like him or loathe him, Ackman is a very interesting character. I’ll kick it off with a quote from Carl Icahn, the legendary Wall Street investor who has tussled with Ackman on more than one occasion, and this kind of encapsulates the core of Ackman’s character: “I would be a very happy man in life if I could be as certain o...

I’m having a bit of a dig at Ross Perot’s height, but for a little guy, this guy had a lot of game—not just as a businessman. This guy could have been the US President. Here is a quote from Time Magazine from 1992, when he threw his hat into the ring to become president: "It's hard to envision a seriously short guy who sounds like a chihuahua as a charismatic threat to democracy, but it i...

I’ll start with a quote from 2023 at a ceremony to announce and celebrate the retirement of the jumbo jet: ""“It is the most well thought out and safest aircraft ever built. Even when you understand the science behind flight, there’s nothing like seeing a 747 take flight to remind you that there’s also magic here.” So spoke John Travolta, the actor and plane nut — he’s a licensed 747 pil...

I just love this story - it has everything - Jonathan Abrams, a young, smart coder from Canada, moved to California because he wanted to be at the very heart of the internet boom. And on nothing more than an intuition, a feeling of how things should be online, he comes up with the framework for a social media platform, the very same model that MySpace, Facebook and all the others then learnt from...

I’ve wanted to dig into  Packers life for a long time now, because one thing I’ve come to know from over 35 years of reading business stories is that when it comes to big characters with the most drama- the media tycoons always win hands down. And so it is with Packer we’re talking getting into an actual brawl with heavies hired by Rupert Murdoch, transforming televised sport, having his name drag...

This is the remarkable story of how Agha Abedi built BCCI, a global bank founded in Pakistan that was revered by its ordinary customers and employees. Abedi was seen as more than just a banker- a visionary and philanthropist. But there was a second bank within the bank called the Dark Network, and this secret side of the bank provided special services for corrupt politicians, funded wars, washed P...

This, I promise you,  is one of the most audacious and just jaw dropping financial schemes that I’ve ever come across. Two young outsiders initially taking on and beating Cornelius Vanderbilt, the richest man in America and then on the back of their success, they attempt to corner the gold market. It's got everything, political corruption, backroom deals in Albany, a siege in New Jersey, back...

This guy is non stop business- even when he’s partying, it’s business. Here’s guy who owned 5 retail stores while still in high school, was making millions by the time he was 18, was CEO of a public company at just  23 and over the last 10 years he has transformed the whole sports licensing and sports fan business through fanatics, a $25 billion company that’s still private. Rubin is just 100% non...

I know what you’re thinking- the Swedish guy who built IKEA- kind of boring - right. But as regular listeners will know by now, I love business, not just the scandals or the high tension battles, but I love finding out how these huge businesses were built, because I know behind every big business is a fascinating entrepreneur, even if they appear outwardly boring- and that’s exactly how it is with...

Regular listeners will know that I have a special grá as we’d say in Ireland or a love for the whole internet bubble era- it’s when I first got into business and it was such a wild time, and the yahoo story encapsulates this so brilliantly- 2 guys  working on a hobby and within just 4 years their hobby is worth $100 billion, helped in no small way by an unheard of $100 million investment from  Mas...

Soros’s life is extraordinary. A Jewish teenager who survived the Nazi occupation, fled communist Hungary with almost nothing, and went on to build one of the most remarkable investing careers in modern history. We’re talking about some of the boldest trades ever made. In his most famous bet — the one that led to the label “the man who broke the Bank of England” — Soros personally made around $650...

Karp is, without question, one of the most unlikely, outspoken, and polarising CEOs in the world — a hyperactive, self-proclaimed neo-Marxist and a classical liberal who built Palantir, a software company involved in some of the most controversial government projects of the past two decades. That includes working with ICE, defence contracts with the Pentagon and the CIA, helping Ukraine hold off a...

 I borrowed the title from a Bloomberg article on Singer where they also described him as aggressive, tenacious and litigious to a fault. I’ve wanted to cover Singer and his firm Ellliott management event since I read the The Caesar’s Palace Coup and the book mainly deals with how Apollo the hedge fund, led by Leon Black who I also did an episode on a few months ago. The book shows how Apollo is t...

This is a story I was completely enthralled by when it broke back in 1995. Leeson’s face was splashed across every newspaper in the days after he disappeared, having brought down Barings Bank by concealing massive losses and then trying to trade his way out of trouble — only to end up losing £827 million- about $1.3 billion. It was nearly 30 years ago now, so I’d forgotten most of the details, whi...

Like most of you, my perception of Parker was as a reckless party boy who somehow inserted himself into 3 of the most influential internet companies—Napster, Facebook and Spotify. Through the movie The Social Network, he's come to be seen as scheming and duplicitous. But that's not the guy I found when I dug deeper—the real Sean Parker is more nuanced and all the better for it. It's a...