Randall Smith discusses and signs The Prince of Silicon Valley: Frank Quattrone and the Dot-Com Bubble February 10, 2010

The Prince of Silicon Valley: Frank Quattrone and the Dot-Com Bubble

The Prince of Silicon Valley traces the rise of the foremost investment banker of the Internet stock-market bubble, from the back streets of South Philadelphia to the peak of finance as the highest paid banker on Wall Street. From Cisco to Netscape to Amazon, Frank Quattrone took some of the biggest names in technology public. During the bubble years of 1999 and 2000, his California-based technology banking group led the most hot initial public offerings, which lifted the entire stock market to record heights.

But after the bubble burst, the hot stocks cooled and ordinary investors lost billions. It emerged that brokers in Quattrone’s firm had created lucrative investment accounts, stuffed with hot IPOs, for banking clients who became known as “Friends of Frank.” Some of the brokers, regulators charged, cut off other investors who refused to pay back a share of their IPO profits.

The story of Quattrone's fall from grace, however temporary, remains a cautionary tale of ambition gone wrong--of a Wall Street Icarus who flew too close to the sun. The Prince of Silicon Valley is an absorbing noir detective story of the investigations and trials that brought him to the brink of disaster.

RANDALL SMITH is an award-winning reporter for The Wall Street Journal who has covered the Street and its denizens for nearly three decades. He is a graduate of Harvard, and with other Journal reporters has shared the George Polk Award and a Pulitzer Prize.