Great Business Stories

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  Masayoshi Son of SoftBank, they turn down the opportunity to buy Google for just $1 million but do buy lots of other companies at crazy valuations- it’s a cracking story- enjoy.

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 million.
But the money is only part of the story. He also gave away roughly $32 billion, becoming one of the most polarising figures in finance and politics.
And while we’ll touch on that controversy, this episode is really about the trades — how he thought, how he positioned, and why they were so extraordinary. I love this story
Enjoy.

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 Russian invasion, and supporting governments around the world during COVID, all the while building Palantir from zero into a company that today is worth $375 billion.It’s not a simple story. But it is a fascinating one.

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 the big beast on Wall Street and uses it’s reputation to intimidate other firms and creditors, except for 1 firm- Elliott management founded by Paul Singer. In this episode we find out how Paul Singer built Elliott to become the most powerful and feared activist hedge fund in the world- and feared not just by CEO’s and company boards, but also by countries. This really is a fascinating story- enjoy.

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, which made revisiting it all the more fun. It’s a cracking story. Enjoy.