What do you think?
Money for Nothing: How the Failure of Corporate Boards Is Ruining American Business and Costing Us Trillions
Of the world's two hundred largest economies, more than half are corporations. They have more influence on our lives than any other institution, but while boards of directors are supposed to police CEOs and provide independent leadership, they have become enabling lapdogs rather than trustworthy watchdogs. As America contends with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, all eyes are turning to the corporate leaders who have perpetrated such egregious failures, padding their own pockets with grossly inflated pay packages even as their businesses fall to ruin, asking, How could things have gone so terribly wrong? How could the stewards of American business—who are supposed to be the gold standard of the global economy—turn out to be so incompetent?
Taking readers right into the boardrooms and behind the scenes of the lavish C-Suites, John Gillespie and David Zweig have interviewed a host of upper-echelon managers and board members at leading companies, from Exxon and Citigroup and Home Depot to Countrywide, to shine a glaring light on the clubby culture of the business elite. The book reveals just how the machinations of good governance have broken down, replaced by a compromised system plagued by greed and see-no-evil culpability, and also reports on a handful of pioneering companies who are bold leaders in corporate reform, offering powerful proof that the system most certainly can be fixed.
Taking readers right into the boardrooms and behind the scenes of the lavish C-Suites, John Gillespie and David Zweig have interviewed a host of upper-echelon managers and board members at leading companies, from Exxon and Citigroup and Home Depot to Countrywide, to shine a glaring light on the clubby culture of the business elite. The book reveals just how the machinations of good governance have broken down, replaced by a compromised system plagued by greed and see-no-evil culpability, and also reports on a handful of pioneering companies who are bold leaders in corporate reform, offering powerful proof that the system most certainly can be fixed.
Audio CD
First published December 21, 2009
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
May 1, 2010
The subtitle of Money for Nothing lets you know what’s coming: How the Failure of Corporate Boards Is Ruining American Business and Costing Us Trillions. If you’ve had your pitchfork and torch at the ready for a march on corporate malfeasance, then this is the book for you.
John Gillespie and David Zweig spend the first half of the book bashing on the easy targets: Countrywide, Lehman Brothers, Tyco, Fannie Mae, GM, Chesapeake, and AIG.
What to do?
For retail investors I think the answer is very easy. Sell the stock and buy stock in a different company. Its a bigger issue for institutional investors. Their ownership interest may be so large that selling their position would bring down the share price even further resulting in an even bigger loss.
After 200+ pages of pointing out board failures the authors turn to a chapter full of solutions and ways to fix boards. If you are a student of corporate governance you’re not going to find anything particularly new or innovative in the author’s proposed solutions.
The real question is how to get them implemented. As the authors tell throughout the book, it’s not in the short-term interests of the board or senior executives to implement these changes. It will be up to the exchanges, regulators and big investors.
John Gillespie and David Zweig spend the first half of the book bashing on the easy targets: Countrywide, Lehman Brothers, Tyco, Fannie Mae, GM, Chesapeake, and AIG.
What to do?
For retail investors I think the answer is very easy. Sell the stock and buy stock in a different company. Its a bigger issue for institutional investors. Their ownership interest may be so large that selling their position would bring down the share price even further resulting in an even bigger loss.
After 200+ pages of pointing out board failures the authors turn to a chapter full of solutions and ways to fix boards. If you are a student of corporate governance you’re not going to find anything particularly new or innovative in the author’s proposed solutions.
The real question is how to get them implemented. As the authors tell throughout the book, it’s not in the short-term interests of the board or senior executives to implement these changes. It will be up to the exchanges, regulators and big investors.
June 2, 2011
If you own stock or plan to, this is a must read.
The problem with American business isn't with the workers,
the Japanese auto plants in the US make as good a car as the ones in Japan.
The problem is with greedy incompetent management.
Starting right at the top, the board of directors.
The system is broken, it needs to be fixed.
The problem with American business isn't with the workers,
the Japanese auto plants in the US make as good a car as the ones in Japan.
The problem is with greedy incompetent management.
Starting right at the top, the board of directors.
The system is broken, it needs to be fixed.
February 8, 2011
This is a classic example of a perfectly good 4000-word magazine article that has no business being a book. The top-level points are fine, but they dwell on each for way too long and with too many examples. There isn't even 100 pages of real material here, let alone 300+.
January 4, 2023
this is a corporate propaganda text. in here you will find out how the corporations are good, only some people at the top might be rotten. the authors will teach you how to embrace the corporations, and ignore any relevant aspect of the problem:
- like who is enabling all this to happen
- like who is taxing you to pay the corporate boards
- like who is printing trillions to make this happen
- like who is helping these ceo avoid prison
- like who is making the problem worse by naming universities and hospitals after them
- and so on for pages.
- like who is enabling all this to happen
- like who is taxing you to pay the corporate boards
- like who is printing trillions to make this happen
- like who is helping these ceo avoid prison
- like who is making the problem worse by naming universities and hospitals after them
- and so on for pages.
February 6, 2016
Investing is a field that borders to almost any other conceivable professional area. If you have more understanding of one area, you will understand some companies better, and you will become a better investor. Some knowledge of corporate governance will definitely make you a better investor. A company that is highly profitable today obviously will not continue that way if it is being badly governed.
That’s why I picked up this book. My expectations were to learn more about corporate governance overall, how the board works and how executives are employed. I wanted to know how to recognize good and bad management when you see it. I don’t know if this was the wrong book for my purposes, because it didn’t seem to deliver any of that. While it seems well-researched, the authors seem lost as to what they want to find out. Most of it is dedicated to describing previous scandals, without much deep analysis unfortunately. The authors seem to hold the view that CEO’s overall are a greedy, unruly bunch of cleptocrats who can only act in a responsible way when rigorously restricted and questioned by the board of directors. And herein lies the problem, the boards of public corporations are often dysfunctional.
It is a nice collection of stories about extreme failures, quite interesting to me, but written in a pretty boring way. It didn’t really give me anything, because it feels like the authors have too little knowledge about investing even to be able to ask the right questions. Much of the 300 pages are also wasted on rather distant topics such as behavioral finance and political corruption, where the authors lack too much in knowledge to provide anything worthwhile anyway.
“The smartest guys in the room”, the book (and movie) about the Enron scandal will serve you much better if you want to learn about corporate scandals (and how to recognize bad management). It is well-written, captivating, and well-researched. But this book, you can skip.
That’s why I picked up this book. My expectations were to learn more about corporate governance overall, how the board works and how executives are employed. I wanted to know how to recognize good and bad management when you see it. I don’t know if this was the wrong book for my purposes, because it didn’t seem to deliver any of that. While it seems well-researched, the authors seem lost as to what they want to find out. Most of it is dedicated to describing previous scandals, without much deep analysis unfortunately. The authors seem to hold the view that CEO’s overall are a greedy, unruly bunch of cleptocrats who can only act in a responsible way when rigorously restricted and questioned by the board of directors. And herein lies the problem, the boards of public corporations are often dysfunctional.
It is a nice collection of stories about extreme failures, quite interesting to me, but written in a pretty boring way. It didn’t really give me anything, because it feels like the authors have too little knowledge about investing even to be able to ask the right questions. Much of the 300 pages are also wasted on rather distant topics such as behavioral finance and political corruption, where the authors lack too much in knowledge to provide anything worthwhile anyway.
“The smartest guys in the room”, the book (and movie) about the Enron scandal will serve you much better if you want to learn about corporate scandals (and how to recognize bad management). It is well-written, captivating, and well-researched. But this book, you can skip.
February 17, 2010
If you're in the field of finance you'll probably rate this higher. I thought the chapters were too long and the material too depressing to rate it higher. My background is Economics and I felt like I needed a finance primer to understand some of the content. If the authors had brought any levity to the subject I'd rate it higher, but as it was I could only read it in 20 minute doses before I wanted to hurt someone.
June 1, 2025
Mielenkiintoista tekstiä amerikkalaisista yrityksistä, ja ennenkaikkea siitä, miten vähän piensijoittajilla on oikeasti oikeuksia. Kirja on kestänyt hyvin aikaa, sillä monet asiat pitävät paikkaansa vielä 15 vuotta myöhemminkin.
May 7, 2010
Recommended by Professor Bruce Barry
July 16, 2011
The most comprehensive and expansive book on irresponsible boards of directors who have persistently been rewarded to fail at their jobs.
August 18, 2011
AKA "Money for Nothing: How CEOs and Boards Enrich Themselves While Bankrupting America"
November 20, 2016
The world of boards and its. Accountability, function, real-world cases... solutions.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews