Acclaimed financial journalist William D. Cohan, the New York Times-bestselling author of Power Failure and House of Cards, joins us with The New York Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin for a conversation about corruption and power in modern finance — and his new book Money to Burn: The Unvarnished Truth About Leon Black, Apollo, and the Rise of a New Wall Street.
In March of 2021, Leon Black, the brilliant and fearsome billionaire founder of investment firm Apollo Global Management, resigned. For more than three decades, Apollo had epitomized the new Wall Street, pioneering both private equity and private credit by delivering staggering returns through aggressive takeovers and contrarian bets. But its most powerful figure would eventually be undone by his own poor judgment — including an affair with a Russian woman intent on a shakedown and a friendship and business relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
Drawing on exclusive reporting and unprecedented access to Apollo Global Management’s key players, Money to Burn traces Black’s extraordinary ascent — from his early rise in the aftermath of the 1980s junk bond crisis to the creation of a financial empire that helped redefine American capitalism to the ethical failures and public scandals that ultimately led to his downfall.
In the first and only live New York launch event for Money to Burn, Cohan and Sorkin go beyond Black’s story to explore the forces that transformed Wall Street over the past four decades — the personalities who amassed extraordinary wealth and influence, and what Apollo’s story reveals about ambition, accountability, and power in American business. Expect an illuminating evening with two of our foremost interpreters of the financial world.