William David Cohan is an American business writer.

Early life and education

Cohan was born in

Worcester, Massachusetts Worcester ( , ) is a city and county seat of Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. Named after Worcester, England, the city's population was 206,518 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the second-List of cities i ...

on February 20, 1960. His father was an

accountant An accountant is a practitioner of accounting or accountancy. Accountants who have demonstrated competency through their professional associations' certification exams are certified to use titles such as Chartered Accountant, Chartered Certifi ...

and his mother worked in administration. Cohan is a graduate of

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

, Columbia University School of Journalism, and Columbia University Graduate School of Business.

Career

Cohan was an investigative reporter for the

Raleigh Times The ''Raleigh Times'' was the afternoon newspaper in Raleigh, North Carolina. The history of the paper dates back to the ''Evening Visitor'', first published in 1879. The ''Visitor'' later bought out other rival afternoon papers, the ''Daily Pres ...

. He then worked on

Wall Street Wall Street is an eight-block-long street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs between Broadway in the west to South Street and the East River in the east. The term "Wall Street" has become a metonym for t ...

for seventeen years as a

mergers and acquisitions Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are business transactions in which the ownership of companies, other business organizations, or their operating units are transferred to or consolidated with another company or business organization. As an aspect ...

banker. He spent six years at

Lazard Frères Lazard Ltd (formerly known as Lazard Frères & Co.) is a financial advisory and asset management firm that engages in investment banking, asset management and other financial services, primarily with institutional clients. It is the world's ...

in New York, then

Merrill Lynch Merrill (officially Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated), previously branded Merrill Lynch, is an American investment management and wealth management division of Bank of America. Along with BofA Securities, the investment bank ...

, and later became a managing director at JP Morgan Chase. He also worked for two years at GE Capital. Since 2013, he has served as a trustee of the

National Humanities Center The National Humanities Center (NHC) is an independent institute for advanced study in the humanities. The NHC operates as a privately incorporated nonprofit and is not part of any university or federal agency. The center was planned under the auspi ...

in Research Triangle Park, NC.

''Vanity Fair'' controversy

In 2019, Cohan alleged the possibility that US president

Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pe ...

or someone close to him had used advance knowledge of political developments to profit from

insider trading Insider trading is the trading of a public company's stock or other securities (such as bonds or stock options) based on material, nonpublic information about the company. In various countries, some kinds of trading based on insider information ...

, publicized in two articles for '' Vanity Fair'' titled ''"'Who Knew Trump Would Offer a Truce With Xi?': The Mystery of the Wall Street Trump Trades"'' and ''"'There Is Definite Hanky-Panky Going On': The Fantastically Profitable Mystery of the Trump Chaos Trades"''. Cohan's second article caused congressional representatives

Ted Lieu Ted W. Lieu (; born March 29, 1969) is an American politician and Air Force Reserve Command colonel who has represented California's 33rd congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2015. The district includes much of weste ...

and Kathleen Rice to call for a federal investigation, but several experts interviewed by Bloomberg questioned the evidence, while Cohan stood by the article but distanced himself from the implied conclusion ("I don’t make any allegations, I don’t know what really happened"). Writing in Slate, Felix Salmon called Cohan's articles "bullshit", arguing that he had no evidence that the trades in question were unusual, or that they had yielded the alleged profits, or that insider knowledge had been involved at all. Further, Terry Duffy, the CEO of CME Group Inc, the company that operates the exchange where the futures trade, questioned Cohan's understanding of the data, "

ohan Ohan is a common masculine Armenian name and can be used as a nickname for Hovhannes or Ohannes. Ohan may refer to: People * Ohan Durian (1922–2011), Armenian conductor *Mikho-Ohan, pen name of Armenian writer Nar-Dos Films * ''Ohan'' (film ...

mistakenly summed up all volume for those derivatives during spans of time and implausibly attributed that buying and selling, spread across thousands of transactions, to a single bad actor or group of cheaters." Cohan's piece, however, is explicit that the trades may have been carried out by many individuals and that "There is no way ... to know who is making these trades. But regulators know or can find out."

Personal life

In 1991 he married editor Deborah Gail Futter in a

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

ceremony.

Books

*'' The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co.'' (2007). Winner, Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. *'' House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street'' (2009). The last days of Bear Stearns & Co. In a talk about the book at Cal State Long Beach, Cohan said he felt it was his mission to get a response to questions left unanswered by Wall Street CEOs. *'' Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World'' (2011). Examines the historical role and influence of

Goldman Sachs Goldman Sachs () is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered at 200 West Street in Lower Manhattan, with regional headquarters in London, Warsaw, Bangalore, H ...

. *'' The Price of Silence: The Duke Lacrosse Scandal, the Power of the Elite, and the Corruption of Our Great Universities'' (2014)''.'' The story of the

Duke lacrosse case The Duke lacrosse case was a widely reported 2006 criminal case in Durham, North Carolina, United States in which three members of the Duke University men's lacrosse team were falsely accused of rape. The three students were David Evans, Collin ...

. *''Why Wall Street Matters'' (2017). *''Four Friends: Promising Lives Cut Short'' (2019). Portraits of Cohan's boarding school roommates at

Andover Andover may refer to: Places Australia * Andover, Tasmania Canada * Andover Parish, New Brunswick * Perth-Andover, New Brunswick United Kingdom * Andover, Hampshire, England ** RAF Andover, a former Royal Air Force station United States * Ando ...

John F. Kennedy, Jr. John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. (November 25, 1960 – July 16, 1999), often referred to as John-John or JFK Jr., was an American lawyer, journalist, and magazine publisher. He was a son of the 35th president of the United States, John F. Kenn ...

, Jack Berman, Will Daniel, and Harry Bull.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Cohan, William D. 1960 births Living people American business writers American economics writers American male non-fiction writers American investigative journalists Duke University alumni Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism alumni Columbia Business School alumni American magazine journalists Phillips Academy alumni Writers from Worcester, Massachusetts 21st-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American male writers