Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street

by Sheelah Kolhatkar

Gerson Lehrman Group called itself a “knowledge broker,” a description that carried a certain irony. In reality, it was a vehicle for delivering superior information to sophisticated investors who were willing to pay for it. Gilman didn’t find his role as an actor in this small market injustice to be unpleasant, however. Quite the opposite. “It was a chance to talk with people with a totally different perspective than the students I dealt with day to day,” Gilman said of the work. “It paid well. It was a diversion. It was enjoyable.” He didn’t need the money—the university paid him $310,000 a year, a generous living in the frugal Midwest—but it didn’t hurt that he was seeing his bank account balance grow every month. For a thirty-minute phone call with a hedge fund trader, GLG paid him $1,000, around twice what top corporate lawyers billed. In-person meetings were charged at $2,000 each.