ENDLICH, Lisa 1959-

PERSONAL: Born 1959; married; children: three. Education: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, M.A. (management and urban planning).

ADDRESSES: Home—England. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Simon & Schuster, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

CAREER: Goldman Sachs, New York, NY, former currency trader and vice president.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

Goldman Sachs: The Culture of Success, Knopf (New York, NY), 1999.

Optical Illusions: Lucent and the Crash of Telecom, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2004.

Also a contributor to the New Jersey Star-Ledger.

SIDELIGHTS: Lisa Endlich offers an insider's look into one of the most powerful, prestigious, and secretive investment banks in the world in her book Goldman Sachs: The Culture of Success. Endlich is a former vice president of the well-known bank, which is considered a training ground for prominent businessmen and U.S. Treasury officials. In 2001 Goldman Sachs' assets stood at 312 billion dollars, more than the gross domestic product (GDP) of the entire nation of Russia. The firm is known for using its money in strategies that can have a marked influence on world economic events, and it is considered a major force in the globalization of economics.

In her book Endlich breaks down Goldman Sachs's history into several eras: that of the family firm, from 1869–1976; the period from 1976–90 when the company became a player on the world stage; the 1990–91 interlude when there were major changes in leadership; the company's peak of success in 1992–93; a rocky year that followed that pinnacle; and the 1995–98 period when the company progressed toward selling shares to the public. Much of her focus is on senior partners who helped guide the economic giant throughout the years, including Sidney Weinberg, Robert Rubin, and Steven Friedman. Reviewing the book for Business History, Michael Bryane called it "a gripping read for business people and for academics," adding that it illuminates "an important part of economic and financial history and offers a novel perspective for addressing current economic theory in the light of business history." Bryane identified the book's biggest weakness as a "lack of broader analysis. While offering many interesting stories, anecdotes and psychological insights, little consideration is given to the larger forces driving the organisation" or to analysis of historical cause and effect.

Even as she documents the firm's struggles, failures, and occasional involvement in scandal, Endlich's tone in Goldman Sachs remains respectful. As Management Today reviewer Howard Davies commented, "her politeness, even reverence at times, is both a strength and a weakness: a strength because she clearly tries hard to explain the motivations of the firm's leadership group in an empathetic and insightful way; a weakness in that much of the writing remains essentially descriptive." Richard Bernstein, reviewing Goldman Sachs for the New York Times, noted that while the book offers a limited viewpoint, "it is not an easy thing to write a lively and informed institutional history, and Ms. Endlich's effort to do so with a large investment bank is a qualified success."

In Optical Illusions: Lucent and the Crash of Telecom the author details the collapse of Lucent Technologies, a company that came into existence because of the deregulation of the telecommunications industry and which eventually went through one of the most spectacular stock crashes in financial history. Lucent was the equipment-manufacturing arm of Bell Laboratories, and when shares in the company went public, prices soared. The phenomenon was part of a general telecommunications boom, but Lucent management became caught up in pressuring their sales force to deliver impossible returns in order to satisfy the high expectations of their investors. Eventually, the company' net worth crashed.

Endlich's book takes a look at the ways in which Lucent struggled to adapt to new trends and the reasons it ultimately failed, offering an "insightful view into the conflicts and leadership styles at this industry giant," according to David Siegfried in Booklist. Ed Gubbins, a reviewer for Telephony, commented on Endlich's insight into the mindset of the Lucent salespeople who knew they could never deliver what they were being asked to do and so developed strategies to help them cope with this impossibility. This even included playing a game while listening to teleconferences in which they were bombarded with buzzwords about boosting sales; each time they heard one of the familiar phrases, they would mark it off on a Bingo card, and when completing a row, they would try to surreptitiously insert the word "bingo" into their conversation with their superiors. According to Gubbins, Optical Illusions "should be required reading for telecom employees, lest they repeat the same route and begin playing games in which everyone eventually loses."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Accounting Today, October 11, 2004, review of Optical Illusions: Lucent and the Crash of Telecom, p. 34.

Booklist, January 1, 1999, David Rouse, review of Goldman Sachs: The Culture of Success, p. 808; November 1, 1999, Brad Hooper, review of Goldman Sachs, p. 490; September 15, 2004, David Siegfried, review of Optical Illusions, p. 185.

Business History, July, 2003, Michael Bryane, review of Goldman Sachs, p. 142.

Business Horizons, May, 2000, Irving Katz, review of Goldman Sachs, p. 79.

Business Week, March 15, 1999, review of Goldman Sachs, p. 15; December 13, 1999, review of Goldman Sachs, p. 21; July 3, 2000, review of Goldman Sachs, p. 17.

InformationWeek, March 15, 1999, "A Rock through a Glass Ceiling?," p. 14.

Institutional Investor International Edition, March, 1999, Hal Lux, review of Goldman Sachs, p. 156.

Library Journal, March 1, 1999, Lucy T. Heckman, review of Goldman Sachs, p. 94; September 15, 2004, Stacey Marien, review of Optical Illusions, p. 67.

Management Today, April, 1999, Howard Davies, review of Goldman Sachs, p. 46.

New York Times, February 22, 1999, Richard Bernstein, review of Goldman Sachs.

Publishers Weekly, January 11, 1999, review of Goldman Sachs, p. 63; August 23, 2004, review of Optical Illusions, p. 46.

Telephony, December 13, 2004, Ed Gubbins, review of Optical Illusions, and interview with Endlich.