"What does it take to steal $5 billion? In 2009, with the dust yet to settle on the financial crisis, a mild-mannered Wharton grad set in motion a fraud of unprecedented gall and magnitude--one that would come to symbolize the next great threat to the global financial system. His name is Jho Low, a man whose behavior was so preposterous he might seem made up. If Jho Low appeared shy on the surface, behind the scenes he was a big-talking, social-climbing huckster. Barely out of college, Low persuaded the prime minister of Malaysia, Najib Razak, to create an investment fund, known as 1MDB. Directing it from the shadows, Low raised more than $10 billion with the aid of Goldman Sachs and others, and over the next half decade siphoned off billions--money used to finance elections; to purchase luxury real estate; to produce Hollywood films, including The Wolf of Wall Street; and to throw champagne-drenched parties around the world. Low's largesse put him at the center of a world that included celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio and Jamie Foxx, supermodels like Miranda Kerr, and even a major donor to President Obama. More staggering still, no one seemed to notice--not the global banks, who seemingly turned a blind eye to shady transfers of hundreds of millions of dollars, nor the official financial-system watchdogs. Tom Wright and Bradley Hope, award-winning Wall Street Journal reporters, have broken dozens of stories about the 1MDB affair. Now, for the first time, they reveal the complete inside story of one of the biggest financial heists in history. Billion Dollar Whale will join the ranks of Liar's Poker and Den of Thieves as a classic, harrowing parable of the financial world, hubris, and greed."--Jacket.

A veteran New York Times reporter dissects the most spectacular failure in real estate history. Real estate giant Tishman Speyer and its partner, BlackRock, lost billions of dollars when their much-vaunted purchase of Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village in New York City failed to deliver the expected profits. But how did Tishman Speyer walk away from the deal unscathed, while others took the financial hit-and MetLife scored a $3 billion profit? Illuminating the world of big real estate the way Too Big to Fail did for banks, Other People's Money is a riveting account of politics, high finance, and the hubris that ultimately led to the nationwide real estate meltdown. "-- "The New York Times reporter who first broke the story of the sale of Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village takes readers inside the most spectacular failure in real estate history, using this single deal as a lens to see how and why the real estate crisis happened. How did the smartest people in real estate lose billions in one single deal? How did the Church of England, the California public employees' pension fund, and the Singapore government lose more than one billion dollars combined investing in a middle-class housing complex in New York City? How did MetLife make three billion dollars on the deal without any repercussions from a historically racist policy of housing segregation? And how did nine residents of a sleepy enclave in New York City win one of the most unlikely lawsuits in the history of real estate law? Not only does Other People's Money answer those questions, it also explains the current recession in stark, clear detail while providing riveting first-person accounts of the titanic failure of the real estate industry to see that a recession was coming. It's the definitive book on real estate during the bubble years--and what happened when that enormous bubble exploded