Banker Rhodes Saved Murdoch from Bankruptcy

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Source of book image: online version of the WSJ review quoted and cited below.

(p. A13) In “Banker to the World,” Mr. Rhodes tries to distil the “leadership lessons” he has learned from his remarkable career on the “front lines of global finance.”
. . .
. . . , Mr. Rhodes does succeed in hammering home three lessons that we need to take to heart if we are to have any chance of navigating the troubled waters that lie ahead. The first is that there is no substitute for the human touch: For all banking’s bells and whistles today, it is much the same business it was in Florentine Italy. Consider one of Mr. Rhodes’s greatest exploits: coordinating the rescue of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. from bankruptcy in 1990. Mr. Rhodes was worried that the collapse of Mr. Murdoch’s heavily-indebted media empire would tip the world economy back into recession. But he decided to bet on Mr. Murdoch only after the two had sat down for a three-hour heart-to-heart over dinner in New York.

For the full review, see:
ADRIAN WOOLDRIDGE. “BOOKSHELF; A Conspiracy of Hunches; A rare master of both the financial and political realms reports on what a half-century of experience taught him.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., June 8, 2011): A15.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: online version of article had the date JULY 13, 2011.)

Book being reviewed:
Rhodes, William R. Banker to the World: Leadership Lessons from the Front Lines of Global Finance. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011.

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