Clarence Dillon: The Roaring 20s Wall Street Baron Who Wrote the Rules for Corporate Takeovers, Junk Bonds, and Bankruptcy

J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Charles E. Mitchell are names that come to mind when thinking of the most prominent icons of wealth and influence during the Roaring Twenties. Yet the one figure who has escaped notice is an enigmatic banker by the name of Clarence Dillon. In the 1920s, as he rose in wealth and influence, Dillon became one of the original behind-the-scenes players in Hollywood, and his contact list included everyone from Thomas Edison to Charlie Chaplin and Joseph P. Kennedy to FDR.

A revolutionary in finance, Clarence Dillon single-handedly created modern bankruptcy law, pioneered leveraged buyouts, invented junk bonds, and engineered some of the biggest mergers and acquisitions ever seen. His firm engineered the 1925 buyout of Dodge Brothers Company for $146 million in cash, then the largest such industrial transaction in history, which resulted in the company's merger with Chrysler Corporation in 1927

Today’s guest is William Loomis, author of “The Baron of Wall Street.” We look at Dillon and his life, which fills a void in how we view the wild excesses of the Roaring Twenties, and how we understand the increasingly complex nexus between Wall Street and political power in our own time.

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