Lowell Bryan thought he had a solution, an idea so big that in the annals of financial history it ranked right up with the invention of double-entry bookkeeping in fifteenth-century Venice. If McKinsey could own this new idea—he called it a “technology”—banks all over the world would be clamoring to hire the firm. Bryan’s big idea: the securitization of credit. While he did not invent securitization, he became one of its biggest, most visible promoters.
