Performing a 'Corporate Autopsy'

Stansberry Investor Hour

Stansberry Research

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4.4 • 677 Ratings

🗓️ 21 November 2022

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week's Stansberry Investor Hour episode features one of the most accomplished financial journalists today. He's a returning guest, and his latest book couldn't have come out at a better time...

But first, Dan and Stansberry Digest editor Corey McLaughlin start off the episode's "opening rant" by taking on a recent headline-maker: the FTX debacle. The world is watching rapt as global authorities comb through the wreckage left by the collapse of this prominent cryptocurrency exchange... only to discover that "it's worse than we initially thought."

Among other "scandals and wonderful things that crashed and burned," as Dan puts it, no one can forget the shocking downfall of another market monolith: General Electric (GE). This company gave us life-changing innovations like the light bulb, radio broadcasts, fluorescent lamps, X-ray machines, jet engines, and more... before it went into a dramatic tailspin starting two decades ago.

That's why today, award-winning author William D. Cohan joins us for his second appearance to cover this spectacular corporate meltdown in depth. His latest book, Power Failure: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon, features rare interviews with key figures from GE (like former CEO Jack Welch). Published just a week ago, it has already drawn scores of praise.

William's prolific career includes several other books – three of which are New York Times bestsellers – and writings for numerous financial publications like Fortune, Barron's, and the Financial Times, to name a few. Plus, he has 17 years of experience in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) banking at some of Wall Street's biggest firms like Lazard, Merrill Lynch, and JPMorgan Chase.

Dan picks William's brain about the writing process for his book...

There's a dead body on the floor, and how did it get there? I'm doing the autopsy. I'm doing a corporate autopsy. How did GE go from being the valuable, most respected company in the world to irrelevant, being broken up, being a fraction of both what it was worth and the respect people had for it?

The two discuss GE's beleaguered history... and then William shares his No. 1 qualitative factor in fundamental analysis that investors should always consider while researching a stock.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the Stansberry Investor Hour. I'm your host, Dan Ferris. I'm also the editor of
0:12.0	Extreme Value published by Stansberry Research. And I'm Corey McLaughlin, editor of the
0:16.8	Stansberry Daily Digest. Today, Dan talks with best-selling author William Cohen, who has a new book out on GE.
0:23.5	And for our opening rant, the FTX debacle gets even crazier.
0:29.0	And remember, you can email us at Feedback at InvestorHour.com and tell us what's on your mind.
0:34.4	That and more right now on the Stansberry Investor Hour.
0:47.0	Well, just when you thought it might be over,
0:51.0	FTC got a little crazier this week.
0:53.8	Did you see the Vox article with all the,
0:56.2	with all the direct messages between Sam Bankman-Fried
1:00.2	and his friend who just happens to be a Vox reporter?
1:04.6	Yeah, that story,
1:06.6	as often is the case with these,
1:10.1	it's worse than you initially thought, I would say.
1:13.7	Yeah, I would say it's worse than we initially thought.
1:16.5	Like, I mean, the list of creditors, there's literally, I think it's like a million,
1:20.7	a million creditors.
1:22.4	And, you know, the list of firms on there is just like you never would have thought in your
1:27.1	life.
1:28.2	I never would have thought in my life that like dan lobe third point capital would have invested in this or like
1:34.0	paul tudor jones i mean i just like i was shocked at the list of creditors but yeah it's it's spread
1:40.0	far and wide i mean black rock was in there It's, you know, and I don't think
	...

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