
The Taking of Getty Oil
The Full Story of the Most Spectacular - and Catastrophic - Takeover of All
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Narrated by:
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Steven Cooper
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By:
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Steve Coll
About this listen
A true story of family, ambition, and greed in the most bitter and controversial takeover struggle in business history. The high-stakes fight between Texaco and Pennzoil to take over Getty Oil is a startling and intriguing case involving family infighting, courtroom drama, and corporate intrigue that ends in bankruptcy and the largest damages award in American history.
©1987, 1988 Steve Coll (P)2014 Audible Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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For the doomed stand American forces made in the Philippines at the start of World War II, two generals received their country’s highest military award, the Medal of Honor. One was the charismatic and controversial Douglas MacArthur, whose orders forced him to leave his soldiers on the islands to starvation and surrender but whose vow to return echoed around the globe. The other was the gritty Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright, who became a hero to the troops whose fate he insisted on sharing even when it meant becoming the highest-ranking American prisoner of the Japanese.
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Excellent and well done
- By Jason on 05-20-25
By: Jonathan Horn
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A Colossal Failure of Common Sense
- The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers
- By: Patrick Robinson, Lawrence G. McDonald
- Narrated by: Erik Davies
- Length: 16 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the biggest questions of the financial crisis has not been answered until now: What happened at Lehman Brothers and why was it allowed to fail, with aftershocks that rocked the global economy? In this news-making, often astonishing book, a former Lehman Brothers Vice President gives us the straight answers - right from the belly of the beast. In A Colossal Failure of Common Sense, Larry McDonald, a Wall Street insider, reveals, the culture and unspoken rules of the game like no book has ever done.
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First take: Tale of the narcissist
- By Susan Hayden on 07-28-09
By: Patrick Robinson, and others
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Den of Thieves
- By: James B. Stewart
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 19 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Pulitzer Prize winner James B. Stewart shows for the first time how four of the biggest names on Wall Street - Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, Martin Siegel, and Dennis Levine - created the greatest insider-trading ring in financial history and almost walked away with billions - until a team of downtrodden detectives triumphed over some of America's most expensive lawyers to bring this powerful quartet to justice.
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Awesome book
- By Lars Tackmann on 10-23-17
By: James B. Stewart
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Crash of the Titans
- Greed, Hubris, the Fall of Merrill Lynch and the Near-Collapse of Bank of America
- By: Greg Farrell
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 16 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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With one notable exception, the firms that make up what we know as Wall Street have always been part of an inbred, insular culture that most people only vaguely understand. The exception was Merrill Lynch, a firm that revolutionized the stock market by bringing Wall Street to Main Street. Merrill Lynch was an icon. Its sudden decline, collapse, and sale to Bank of America was a shock. How did it happen? Why did it happen?
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The author needs an outline or timeline
- By Stephanie on 12-19-10
By: Greg Farrell
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The Last Tycoons
- The Secret History of Lazard Freres & Co.
- By: William D. Cohan
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 32 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Discretion, secrecy, and subtle strategy were the weapons of choice at Wall Street investment bank Lazard Frères & Co. For more than a century, the mystique and reputation of the "Great Men" who worked there allowed the firm to garner unimaginable profits, social cachet, and outsized influence in the halls of power. But in the mid-1980s, their titanic egos started getting in the way, and the Great Men of Lazard jeopardized all they had built.
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Good stuff
- By Mr. M Metwally on 09-07-07
By: William D. Cohan
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Conspiracy of Fools
- A True Story
- By: Kurt Eichenwald
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 30 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Say the name 'Enron' and most people believe they've heard all about the story that imperiled a presidency, destroyed a marketplace, and changed Washington and Wall Street forever. But in the hands of Kurt Eichenwald, the players we think we know and the business practices we think have been exposed are transformed into entirely new, and entirely gripping, material.
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Great Story
- By Adam M Pokorski on 06-06-06
By: Kurt Eichenwald
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Money and Power
- How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World
- By: William D. Cohan
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 30 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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From the best-selling, prize-winning author of The Last Tycoons and House of Cards, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, feared, and controversial investment bank in the world. William D. Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable - and so powerful.
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Much better than expected
- By Mark on 06-15-11
By: William D. Cohan
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Green Gold
- The Avocado's Remarkable Journey from Humble Superfood to Toast of a Nation
- By: Sarah Allaback, Monique F. Parsons
- Narrated by: Maria McCann
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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The avocado is the quintessential symbol of aspirational living, a ubiquitous agricultural favorite, and the driver of an $18 billion global industry. How did this regional Latin American staple become a star of Super Bowl ads and a byword for wellness? Documenting more than a century of cross-cultural cooperation, cutting-edge science, and savvy marketing, Green Gold tells the remarkable story of the fruit's rise to prominence as both a culinary and cultural juggernaut.
By: Sarah Allaback, and others
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Dickens the Enchanter
- Inside the Explosive Imagination of the Great Storyteller
- By: Peter Conrad
- Narrated by: David Rintoul, Peter Conrad
- Length: 12 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Dickens the Enchanter takes us deep into an imagination whose power and originality struck some contemporaries as godlike while others thought it demonic. If you already love Dickens, it will renew your understanding of him; if you have yet to experience him, it will lure you into his astonishing, alarming, enchanted world.
By: Peter Conrad
Captivating business story
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Yet, there is a clear determinism in the sequence of events, a logical flow, but unpredictable, in the way impenetrable chaos is deterministic. It makes sense in the (skillful) telling, but midstream, we can't tell where it (and the characters) will wind up. I.e., this is a great explication of real life, with a kicker of billions of dollars whipped into the mix, a sort of accellerant.
All this is told in meticulous, lucid, businesslike detail. The author understands the legal structures and the stakes, and wastes barely a word describing each moment. The tempo delights me. This is not a sloppily written book. All the weirdness and hilarities of narrative twists are somehow laid out in a sober and constantly understandable sequence. Despite all this, if you don't like corporate/legal matters, you might not enjoy this so much. But for me, the colorful stories of a truly weird family provide a strangely hilarious relief peppered all through the sophisticated structures and plot turns. I can't get enough of it, and fortunately this is a prolific author. On deck: The Exxon-Mobil book. I have a new favorite author.
Dazzling on so many levels
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I had read a bio of J Paul Getty and his complex life, which was quite interesting. I decided to read this to find out what happened to the company his father had built and he had carefully managed and grew over the years. I could see why Gordon was not his choice to handle the trust alone. Undoubtedly, J Paul would be angry and disappointed at how the company was destroyed. The management team had done an admirable job of running the company, but with the death of an influential company lawyer, things quickly grew out of control. Gordon's lack of business instinct led to situations that out the company in danger. He was unaware and didn't care. I felt sympathy for Sid Peterson, the exec in charge, trying to protect the company and manage Gordon's increasingly unusual requests wanting to "enhance shareholder value." His misguided efforts led to numerous lawyers ( for him, for the company, for the trust, then the merger and valuations). It finally reached the point where the company was forced to find a buyer and fend off takeover attempts. Predatory businessmen and lawyers came for the feeding frenzy. You need a scorecard to keep track of all the players. Gordon, the Getty Trust, Getty Museum, other family members, the board of directors of Getty Oil, Pennzoil, Texaco and an army of lawyers. This led to one of the largest mergers and largest lawsuit damages at the time. This was a long book even for me to get through. The first half flew, my favorite parts being the board vs Gordon. It bogged down for me during the trial. I read this book using immersion reading. Narration by Steven Cooper was straightforward and rote.
Destruction of Getty Oil
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Coll is a master!
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Masterful telling of a cautionary business tale by a masterful journalist.
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The first part of the book is about the Getty family and their inner fights. The middle of the book is about Getty oil and its corporate officers and board members and their relationship with Gordon Getty. The last part of the book is about the trial.
Three and a half years of haggling and infighting preceded the legal judgment. Gordon Getty, one of the J. Paul Getty’s sons became sole trustee of the Sarah C. Getty Trust, which owned 40% of Getty Oil’s stock. Gordon Getty maneuvered for control of the company in opposition of the company management and his family. Pennzoil thought they did a takeover in January of 1984 in an agreement in principle to buy the bloc of Getty Stock, then the following week Texaco offered more money and bought the same stock.
On November 1985 a Houston court awarded a ten billion dollar judgment against Texaco to Pennzoil. It is the largest damages award yet made in an American business case.
The book by Coil reads like a novel with lots of drama, family conflicts and business fighting. I found the book most interesting. Steven Cooper narrated the book.
Sibling contention, intrique, courtroom drama
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A business history and legal thriller in one
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Couldn’t get over the reading
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Terrible narration
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Narrator ruins what is otherwise a good book
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