Money to Burn: The Unvarnished Truth About Leon Black, Apollo, and the Rise of a New Wall Street

From the bestselling author of House of Cards and Power Failure comes the sweeping tale of a powerful and controversial financial empire, set against the turbulent backdrop of a rapidly changing Wall Street. On March 22, 2021, Leon Black, the brilliant and fearsome billionaire founder of investment firm Apollo Global Management, resigned. For more than three decades, Apollo had epitomized the new Wall Street, pioneering both private equity and private credit by delivering staggering returns through aggressive takeovers and astute, contrarian bets. But its most powerful figure would eventually be undone by his own poor judgment, including a friendship and business relationship with the disgraced pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and an affair with a Russian woman intent on a shakedown. Yet the path to that reckoning began long before. When Drexel Burnham Lambert collapsed amid the junk bond crisis of the late 1980s, Apollo rose from its ashes, led by Michael Milken's protégé, a young dealmaker named Leon Black. His financial genius and relentless drive mirrored that of his father, a celebrated Wall Street businessman whose life ended in a shocking scandal and unfathomable tragedy.