"Summer reading": The words conjure up an idyllic picture of leisurely days on the beach devoted to immersion in a page-turner. In reality, of course, most senior real estate executives are much more likely to steal a few precious hours for reading on a cross-country flight than under a beach umbrella. Given the demands on their time to synthesize information from a battery of sources, it is remarkable that company leaders find time for books in the first place. That said, an informal survey of company leaders suggests that executives' top picks among both new and classic books offers not only provocative reading but a rare window into their concerns.
The capital markets crisis has yielded a rich literature, and some aspect of the capital markets crisis figures into every CEO's selection. Several cited Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System and Themselves by Andrew Ross Sorkin. For Peter Roberts, CEO for Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. in the Americas, Sorkin's account "offers good insight into leadership behaviors in a crisis and draws a pretty stark contrast between how different leaders respond."
Another recommendation is The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, Michael Lewis' 2010 account of the housing and credit bubbles. "It should be required reading for all of today's commercial and finance professionals," declared Fred Schmidt, president & COO of Coldwell Banker Commercial Affiliates L.L.C., who also serves as president of the ONCOR International L.L.C. network. The Big Short also won the endorsement of Richard Green, director of the Lusk Center for Real Estate at the University of Southern California. Lewis' work, Gregory Zuckerman's The Greatest Trade Ever: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of How John Paulson Defied Wall Street and Made Financial History and 13 Bankers by Simon Johnson and James Kwak are "the most vivid descriptions of what went wrong," Green said.
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Another recommendation is The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, Michael Lewis' 2010 account of the housing and credit bubbles. "It should be required reading for all of today's commercial and finance professionals," declared Fred Schmidt, president & COO of Coldwell Banker Commercial Affiliates L.L.C., who also serves as president of the ONCOR International L.L.C. network. The Big Short also won the endorsement of Richard Green, director of the Lusk Center for Real Estate at the University of Southern California. Lewis' work, Gregory Zuckerman's The Greatest Trade Ever: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of How John Paulson Defied Wall Street and Made Financial History and 13 Bankers by Simon Johnson and James Kwak are "the most vivid descriptions of what went wrong," Green said.
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Despite a few mixed feelings, Green found lasting value in Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. "I find Taleb annoying, but that doesn't mean he isn't right about a lot," he observed. On a more offbeat note, the USC Lusk Center's director found compelling reading in Tom Wolfe's 2001 novel A Man in Full, whose protagonist owns an office complex burdened by heavy debt. Green cites the tale for its insights into "how hubris bites people in the real estate business."