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"DAN RATHER ""Kevin Goldman is a first-rate reporter and, it turns out, a first-rate author as well. ""Conflicting Accounts"" is an engrossing case study of the advertising business as practiced on the grandest possible scale. A supremely astute observer, Kevin Goldman provides sharply etched portraits of some of the most fascinating figures in the modern financial world. Anyone interested in the realities of business today will want to read ""Conflicting Accounts"", as it details the rise and fall of a colossal empire, the clash of mighty ambitions, and the fiercely competitive jungle that is the world marketplace."" JONATHAN ALTER ""Don Hewitt, the legendary creator of ""60 Minutes"", once said that Kevin Goldman knew more about what was going on at CBS than he did. The same is now true of the advertising business. Kevin Goldman is an ace reporter, deep inside the biggest, most colorful crackup in the history of advertising. The rise, fall, and rise of the Saatchis illuminates not just their business but global business in general in the 1990s. Goldman tells us how it really works."" KEN AULETTA ""Fans of great storytelling will love ""Conflicting Accounts"". The characters in this soap opera often behave in mad and seamy ways. But there are these differences: this wonderful yarn is true and their behavior has important, and depressing, consequences for the public."""

A revelatory briefing on how, in less than 25 years, Charles and Maurice Saatchi managed to build and then nearly destroy the Western world's largest advertising agency. Drawing on a wealth of sources, Wall Street Journal correspondent Goldman recounts how the brothers, born to Jewish parents in Baghdad during the 1940s but brought to England as infants, set up shop in 1970 London with a handful of associates. Charles, the elder by three years, provided the creative drive while urbane Maurice served as the rainmaking front man. The fledgling firm attracted useful attention with imaginative campaigns, e.g., a birth-control promotion for Great Britain's Health Education Council that featured the picture of a pregnant man. A flair for takeovers helped keep the agency growing through the mid-1980s, when Saatchi & Saatchi launched a successful invasion of Madison Avenue and claimed the top spot in the global ad industry. Thereafter, the installment payments due on past acquisitions, a slump in demand for advertising, and ill-advised forays into consulting services caused a severe liquidity squeeze and the stock market's subsequent markdown of Saatchi & Saatchi securities; and institutional investors began focusing on the willful, spendthrift ways of the founders. After a series of unseemly battles fought in the press and boardroom, Maurice was ousted at the start of 1994. Charles followed him out the door and became an equal partner in a start-up agency operating under the M&C Saatchi banner. Despite account defections, legal strife, and staffing problems, their old firm (renamed Cordiant) weathered all storms and remains a force to be reckoned with. A vivid, tellingly detailed reconstruction of the birth and near-death experience of a consequential multinational enterprise, which ranges widely among such variant milieus as art, commerce, fashion, the media, politics, and show-biz. (Kirkus Reviews)

The intriguing story of two brothers, Maurice and Charles Saatchi who managed to build arguably the most significant advertising agency in the world, Saatchi & Saatchi Co Ltd, and then plot its downfall. Charles, the elder creative genius behind the agency (at one time he controlled half of the modern art market) and Maurice, the charmer with questionable management skills, were behind the notably successful campaigns which helped British Airways to become 'the world's favourite airline', propelled Margaret Thatcher into power with the memorable, powerful slogan 'Labour Isn't Working' and successfully assisted the Health Education Council to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. A string of takeovers in the mid-80s kept the agency growing and a successful invasion of Madison Avenue allowed Saatchi to claim the highly sought-after prize of top spot in the global advertising industry. However, by 1989 a combination of a slump in demand for advertising, rising debts for past acquisitions and high costs for ill-advised forays into consulting services, tipped the agency into the red, eventually culminating in Maurice being ousted as chairman in December 1994 by the board and institutional investors. Humiliated, but not down, Maurice established a new agency New Saatchi (later renamed Cordiant) with his brother and three former Saatchi executives to cripple to old '& Co Ltd', but not without a string of legal battles, account deflections and staffing problems. Kevin Goldman has paid much attention to detail to make this fascinating account of the Saatchis read like a modern business horror story. (Kirkus UK)

DAN RATHER Kevin Goldman is a first-rate reporter and, it turns out, a first-rate author as well. Conflicting Accounts is an engrossing case study of the advertising business as practiced on the grandest possible scale. A supremely astute observer, Kevin Goldman provides sharply etched portraits of some of the most fascinating figures in the modern financial world. Anyone interested in the realities of business today will want to read Conflicting Accounts , as it details the rise and fall of a colossal empire, the clash of mighty ambitions, and the fiercely competitive jungle that is the world marketplace.

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Kevin Goldman has written for The New York Times and been a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Variety, and The Wall Street Journal, where for more than three years he was the daily advertising columnist. He lives in New York City with his wife and two children.

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