King of the Club
Richard Grasso and the Survival of the New York Stock Exchange
Chapter One
It's Good to be King
September 11, 2001, started out as a typical late-summer day in New York. More than 350,000 people filed into the lower Manhattan financial district on a bright, sunny morning when tragedy seemed to be the furthest thing from anyone's mind. Grasso arrived at the office that morning at his usual time, 7:00 A.M., prepared to ring the opening bell with executives from Bergen Brunswig Corporation, a pharmaceutical company that was listed on the exchange, but first he went through the newspapers, and as always he had CNBC on the tube. Company officials were already in the exchange, assembled in the dining hall. By now Grasso had established a certain ritual for all companies he convinced to pay a fee of as much as $500,000 annually to have their shares listed to trade on the New York Stock Exchange; company officials and his senior staff would attend an elaborate breakfast where Grasso would extol the virtues of the world's greatest stock market. From there it was off ... read full excerpt from King of the Club ebook
