Knee, Jonathan A.
Knee, Jonathan A.
PERSONAL:
Education: Boston University, B.A., 1981; Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, M.Sc., 1984; Stanford Graduate School of Business, M.B.A., 1987; Yale Law School, J.D., 1988.
ADDRESSES:
Home—New York, NY. E-mail—jk2110@columbia.edu.
CAREER:
Investment banker, lawyer, educator, and writer. Officer of Governor, Springfield, IL, governor's fellow, 1981-82; State of Illinois, Chicago, youth services coordinator, 1982-83; Yale University, New Haven CT, acting instructor of economics, 1984-85; Powell, Goldstein, Frazer & Murphy, Washington, DC, attorney, 1988-92; United Airlines, Chicago, senior staff executive for international affairs, 1992-94; Northwestern University School of Law, Chicago, adjunct professor, 1992-94; Goldman Sachs, London, England, and New York, NY, vice president of Communications, Media & Technology Group and head of Publishing Sector, 1994-98; Morgan Stanley, New York, NY, principal of Media group, 1998-99, managing director of Media Group, 1999-2003, Co-Head of Media Group, 2001-03; Columbia Graduate School of Business, New York, NY, adjunct professor of finance and economics, 2001—, director of media program, 2004—; Evercore Partners, New York, NY, senior managing director, 2003—. Has also served on nonprofit boards and in various community programs, including Homeless Children's Tutorial Project, Washington DC, steering committee, 1989-92; Commission on Human Rights, Washington, DC, hearing examiner, 1990-92; Chicago Council of Foreign Relations, Chicago, Committee on Foreign Affairs, 1992-94, Chicago United, Chicago, IL, deacon, 1993-94; New York City Investment Fund, New York, NY, Media and Entertainment Sector Group, 1996—. Also serves on the board of directors of Arts Connection, New York, NY, 2002—, Citizens' Committee for Children of New York, New York, NY, 2002—, Fort Valley State University Foundation, Fort Valley, GA, 2002—, New Alternatives for Children, New York, NY, 2002—, National Women's Law Center, Washington, DC, 2002—, and Yale Law School Fund, New Haven, CT, 2003—.
MEMBER:
WRITINGS:
The Accidental Investment Banker: Inside the Decade That Transformed Wall Street, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2006.
SIDELIGHTS:
Jonathan A. Knee has worked in investment banking and is the author of The Accidental Investment Banker: Inside the Decade ThatTransformed Wall Street. In an interview on the OUPblog site, the author explained his reason for writing the book: "Over the years as an investment banker and a business school teacher, two related phenomena have always struck me. First, how little the general public understands what investment bankers actually do … [and] second, how little investment bankers themselves understand about the historical context of the role that they do play." The author continued: "I wanted to find a way to tell the story of investment banking that had some impact on both of these phenomena."
The Accidental Investment Banker focuses on the operation of two major investment banking firms that the author worked for in the 1990s and early into the twenty-first century: Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. The author explores the role of investment bankers and explains the making and completion of business deals requiring investment banking. The author also has some harsh words for the investment banking industry concerning its loss of integrity and how this has negatively impacted both business and individuals. "He weaves a fascinating tale of his employers and a multibillion-dollar industry," wrote Mary Whaley in Booklist. Justin McHenry, writing on the Blogcritics Web site, noted: "Knee's ability to bring the characters he's met alive on the page—and his willingness to dish the gossip on how they treated others and were treated themselves in the stormy internal politics of these firms—makes the book more of a page-turner than you'd expect."
BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:
PERIODICALS
Atlantic Monthly, October, 2006, review of The Accidental Investment Banker: Inside the Decade That Transformed Wall Street, p. 126.
Booklist, September 1, 2006, Mary Whaley, review of The Accidental Investment Banker, p. 30.
Fortune, July 24, 2006, Nadira Hira, "An Adman and an I-Banker Tell All" (includes brief review of The Accidental Investment Banker), p. 190.
ONLINE
Blogcritics,http://blogcritics.org/ (September 18, 2006), Justin McHenry, review of The Accidental Investment Banker.
Columbia University Web site,http://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/whoswho/getpub.cfm?pub=1027 (May 17, 2007), author's curriculum vitae.
OUPblog (Oxford University Press USA), http://blog.oup.com/ (August 24, 2006), "A Conversation with Jonathan Knee: Author of The Accidental Investment Banker."