Randall Smith
Freelance Journalist, Investing Reporter
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Frank Quattrone and the Dot-Com Bubble

In the summer of 1999, I was an approached by an intermediary at the WSJ about whether I'd be interested in profiling a banker who was at the top of the red-hot world of dot-com IPOs. Of course I agreed, and for the next decade I worked off-and-on on stories --and a book -- about the banker, Frank Quattrone, and the voluminous regulatory fallout from his two years at the center of what had proven to be the dot-com bubble. Although many of his IPOs had crashed and burned, one of them, Amazon.com, became a spectacular business success over next 20 years.

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The first few Quattrone stories were routine star-banker material.

Then things got darker after dot-com stocks helped tank the entire market in 2000 and 2001.

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A Probe of IPO Abuses Ensnared Brokers Who Worked with Quattrone, Among Others

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Then Regulators Began Focusing on Additional Abuses In Stock Research and IPOs

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Then a Group of Us Money & Investing Reporters Unearthed an Email

suggesting that Quattrone might have interfered with the original IPO probe, resulting in the banker's quick indictment and trial.

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Prosecutors Scored a Victory with a Conviction in Quattrone's Second Trial, But Two Years Later, An Appeals Court Ruled They Had Over-reached.

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