By 1960, the fortunes were completely turned around. The investment, not only made Xerox employees richer but produced tremendous value for Carlson and the University of Rochester which invested in Haloid (now Xerox) in its early days. From 1947 to 1960, Haloid spent $75M (twice its earnings) on the photocopy process, more stock issues were raised, employees were paid in stock. Carlson patented it and sold it to Battelle, who resold it to Haloid for royalty. R&DĬarlson and Kornei came up with a basic photocopying process in 1938 at a non-profit industrial research Institute Battelle Memorial Institute, Columbus, Ohio. The book also contains a general discussion on Federal Income Tax and the role of the stockholder meetings. Both of these, in my opinion, can be skipped. Currency crisis – The story of the British Sterling’s fight against its devaluation is about the role of central banks in preventing a currency crisis.Market Crash – The story of the small market crash of 1962 is about the role of exchange and the mutual funds to prevent the irrational behavior from causing wide swings in the market.

Market fraud – The story of Haupt is about the role of exchange in protecting customers of the exchange member firms against fraud by those members to increase confidence in the market for the retail investors.

Market manipulation – The story of Piggly Wiggly is about how publicly traded companies have to face market manipulation.

Public vs private sector – The story of Lilienthal is about the role a person coming from the public sector played in the private sector.

Insider Trading – The story of Texas Gulf Sulpher is about employees ability to trade on insider information.

Trade Secrets – The story of Goodrich engineer leaving the company for a competitor is about the role of trade secrets.

Communication – The story of GE is about illegal price fixation and intra-company communication.

Product – The story of Ford’s Edsel is about the failure of overhyped products.

R&D – The story of Xerox is a company’s dangerous bet on making photocopying work.

The stories can roughly be divided into two parts Business On the surface, the stories will appear completely unrelated but underneath the idea is to touch all aspects of the business. It consists of 12 chapters, with one story each, most of them from the Wall Street of the 1960s. The book is rated as the best business book by both Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.

The business adventures