In Testosterone Inc. : Tales of CEOs Gone Wild, bestselling author
and New York Post columnist Chris Byron chronicles the Gatsby-like
saga of the rise and fall of the celebrity CEO. During the height
of the 1990s bull market, they were America's new heroes: the
heroes of business. They were our bold new leaders, cutting the
fat, pushing for productivity, implementing visionary plans, and
making strategic deals.
When the bull market turned to bust and the applause turned to
cat-calls, the world was shocked at the truth. Drenched in money
and public acclaim, our CEO-heroes--mostly white, mostly male,
mostly middle-aged--turned out to be not much different than a
group of twenty-something rock stars--drunk on power and
driven by sex, greed, and glamour.
Testosterone Inc. goes behind the boardroom doors to show the
serial affairs and marriages of these acquisitive corporate
titans. At the center of this story is Jack Welch, the
biggest of America's rock star CEOs and the former head of
General Electric Co. , surrounded by "mini-me" CEOs Ron
Perelman of Revlon, Al Dunlap of Sunbeam, and Dennis Kozlowski of
Tyco--all gone wild in public displays of consumption and
predatory appetites writ large.
Byron gets inside the bars where Welch liked to hang out and
pick up women with his early "business soul mate"
buddies. Byron hovers unseen at the elbow of Ron Perelman and his
mistress aboard the Concorde for a week in Paris in his mistaken
belief that his wife knows nothing about his secret affair. Byron
peeks behind the curtains of a U. S. Army officers' quarters
to behold Al Dunlap horrifying his first wife, who claimed in her
divorce action that Dunlap would point his knife at her and say,
"I often wondered what human flesh tasted like." Byron
becomes a fly on the wall to chronicle the longing for respect and
serial womanizing of Dennis Kozlowski.
Frequently hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking, Testosterone Inc.
follows the intertwined lives of these four corporate heroes, from
childhood to their ultimate moments of glory and the crash-and-burn
calamities that followed, as man's age-old hunger for power,
greed, and temptation undid them all. From suicide to murder,
from dysfunctional childhoods to dysfunctional marriages in
adulthood, from business chutzpah to financial suicide, here is the
ultimate untold business story of our time: what went on at
century's end, when testosterone got the best of businessmen
everywhere, and CEOs went wild.
