Serpent on the rock

It was the summer of '81 and the brokers at the shabby offices of Bache & Co. couldn't have been happier: After years of their business being tainted by one scandal after another, the beleaguered firm was being purchased by one of America's most respected institutions, Prudential Insurance. Soon rechristened as Prudential-Bache Securities, the brokerage firm would continued the trust needed to attract thousands of new investors eager to put their savings into rock-solid investments. Yet as billions of dollars began pouring in from around the country, Pru-Bache executives and their outside sponsors of investment deals were secretly eating into the very cash Pru-Bache was supposed to be protecting - and indeed growing - for their customers. As their brokers were touting financially shaky limited partnership deals as safe and solid investments, everyone from elderly retirees to sophisticated investors was being duped, with hundreds of thousands of them losing their homes, their retirement funds, or massive chunks of their savings. Meanwhile, executives at Pru-Bache and their colleagues were enjoying lavish party vacations, exorbitant personal gifts, and business trips aboard ships like the QE2 - all paid for by the investor capital with which they were entrusted. By the time regulators could pin anything on Pru-Bache, what began as the comeback story of the '80s had become the most destructive scandal Wall Street had ever known. In Serpent on the Rock, award-winning reporter Kurt Eichenwald, who investigated the scandal for the New York Times, tells the whole devastating story of the rot behind the dignified facade of Wall Street. With intricate detail of the crimes and lies behind the "rock-solid" image, Eichenwald re-creates the colorful characters who were the primary enablers of the massive scandal the company is still reeling from today.