A Wall Street Legend Recounts His Fifty Years in the Stock Market, Hedge Funds, and Philanthropy
Wall Street mogul Leon Cooperman provides a brilliant business memoir encompassing a quarter-century with Goldman Sachs and then the management of his own successful hedge fund, Omega Advisors. Cooperman traces his life story from his roots as the son of immigrant parents in the Bronx through his days as an undergraduate at Hunter College, his subsequent graduate studies at the Columbia Business School, and beyond, all the way to his current role as a subscriber to Warren Buffet's "Giving Pledge" and a committed philanthropist engaged in giving away the entirety of his multi-billion-dollar fortune. Along the way, Cooperman also spells out his philosophies and "best practices" for stock research and investment, rooted in the classic value-investing approach originated by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd. Additionally, Cooperman makes an impassioned defense of capitalism as the best of all possible economic systems. Cooperman's narrative also includes meditations on taxes in general (and a wealth tax in particular) and challenges the thinking of political progressives who espouse policies which Cooperman believes would unduly restrain the free market.
Hedge fund manager and former colleague Doug Kass describes Leon Cooperman as an "estimable humanitarian" who's been "seasoned with a pinch of Horatio Alger and a heaping spoonful of justified self-confidence." Indeed, this is certainly the flavor that comes through in Mr. Cooperman's timely memoir, From the Bronx to Wall Street: My Fifty Years in Finance and Philanthropy. In this era of Warren Buffett's "Giving Pledge," Mr. Cooperman and his wife, Toby, have become two of the country's most prominent supporters of hospitals, scholarships, colleges, libraries, and other vital programs and institutions. In these pages, Mr. Cooperman not only recounts fascinating details from his long career at Goldman Sachs and his hedge fund, Omega Advisors, but also speaks movingly, and with great insight, about the meaning of wealth and the moral responsibilities that come with it.
