When the Wolves Bite By Scott Wapner

When the Wolves Bite:
Two Billionaires, One Company, and an Epic Wall Street Battle
Scott Wapner
When the Wolves Bite How I consumed the book: Audible
When the Wolves Bite Short Recap: This book has sort of the feel of a true crime, in which there is no crime. In today’s modern investor climate, the “class of super investors,” known as activists that include Carl Icahn and William Ackman, no business no matter the size is immune to its target. This book’s core topic is the battle over Herbalife with Ackman betting huge against the company, see it as a fraudulent business, and Carl Icahn betting long on it. With a limited number of deals, and growing number of large activist investors, show downs are bound to happen, but this one took a very personal and aggressive tone over the course of several years.
This story and the fight over the survival of a long established and publicly traded company makes high finance extremely interesting and compelling even for the non-investor. I recommend not googling the outcome if you don’t already know it.

When the Wolves Bite Application to Business: What I took away most clearly from a business prospective was to not allow your emotions or personal feelings to cloud your judgement. Although most of us will never make billion-dollar decisions, we do have life altering choices to make on occasion. Whether you are an employee, or an employer personal feelings and prejudices can skew our decisions in one direction or the other. For one of these “new masters of the universe,” that would cost them a billion dollars.
When the Wolves Bite Application to Life: The other major take away for me was that nobody should ever be too confident or too caught up in their own hype. Even multi-billionaires are subject being brought back down to earth. There is a saying that there is always someone better than you, and we would all do well to remember that.
No matter how successful, or handsome or beautiful, or rich, or athletic we are or think we are there is always someone that is more than us. Stay humble, and keep working is my personal take away.

Recommendation: Worth the Read (The audible is highly recommended)