Mergers and Acquisitions
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- £3.99
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
Mergers & Acquisitions is the story of Tommy Quinn, a recent Georgetown graduate who has just landed the job of his dreams as an investment banker at J. S. Spenser, and the perfect girl, Frances Sloan, the daughter of one of New York's oldest moneyed families. As he travels from the most exclusive ballrooms of the Racquet and Tennis Club to the stuffiest boardrooms of J. S. Spenser, from the golf links of Piping Rock to the bedrooms of Park Avenue, and from the debaucheries on the yacht of a Mexican billionaire to the Ritalin-strewn prep-school dorm of his younger brother, he finds that the job and the girl are not what they once seemed.
Sharply written, fast-paced and bitingly witty, Mergers & Acquisitions is a compulsively readable story of Manhattan's young, ambitious and wealthy. Set against the backdrop of money, lust, power, corruption, cynicism, energy and excitement that is Wall Street, it is suffused with an authenticity that only an author who lives in that world can provide. A former investment banker at JPMorgan, Vachon offers an insider's point of view on the financial scene, and he knows the moneyed turf of Manhattan inside out.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Greenwich, Conn. bred Vachon did a stint at JP Morgan after graduating from Duke, an experience that no doubt influenced this dizzying romp through investment banking heaven and hell, which rises and falls among numbing corporate indoctrination, pressure-choked deadlines, fabulously swank parties and an obscenely over-the-top business junket complete with kidnappers. At the heart of it all is Tommy Quinn, an upper-middle-class kid from Westchester whose Georgetown degree in Interdisciplinary Studies leaves him bereft of finance know-how. No matter, once Tommy hooks up with Princeton grad Roger Thorne (who has a real pedigree, a reputation for sexual prowess and a hot sister), and the two pursue careers based mainly on smoke and mirrors. Vachon's glee in poking fun at this complex, debased world is evident in his purposefully excessive descriptions of sex (particularly Roger's "dude"-laden monologues), drugs and ruthless execs, but there's a certain amount of drooling involved, too, in the intricate descriptions of jewels and bonuses. Tommy's romance with Frances Sloan, a troubled trust fund heiress, is predictable (though still diverting), and his and Roger's careers (along with several gratuitous deaths that mark them) have denouements and aftermaths that feel forced at best. Imagine a tyro Jay McInerney without the pathos and the been-there, done-that offhandedness.
