Steve Coll’s Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power, published by Penguin Press and Allen Lane. The book is a hard-hitting investigation of the notoriously secretive ExxonMobil Corporation, beginning with the Exxon Valdez accident in 1989 and closing with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
The award, which recognises the book that provides ‘the most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues’, was presented this evening to Coll in New York by Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times and chair of the panel of judges, and Lloyd C. Blankfein, chairman and chief executive officer, The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.
Coll certainly had strong competition to win the £30,000 prize:
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty
Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson (Crown Business, Profile Books)
The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: Risk-taking, Gut Feelings and the Biology of Boom and Bust
John Coates (The Penguin Press, Fourth Estate)
Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography
Walter Isaacson (Simon & Schuster; Little, Brown)
What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits Of Markets
Michael J. Sandel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Allen Lane)
Volcker: The Triumph of Persistence
William L. Silber (Bloomsbury Press)
Each of the five runners-up received a cheque for £10,000.
The distinguished judging panel for the 2012 award included:
Vindi Banga, Partner, Clayton, Dubilier & Rice
Lynda Gratton, Professor of Management Practice, London Business School
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, President, American Action Forum
Arthur Levitt, former Chairman, United States Securities and Exchange Commission
Jorma Ollila, Chairman, Royal Dutch Shell
Shriti Vadera, Director of Shriti Vadera Ltd, Non-Executive Director, BHP Billiton and AstraZeneca
In Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Steve Coll investigates the largest and most powerful private corporation in the United States, the notoriously secretive ExxonMobil Corporation, revealing the true extent of its power. ExxonMobil’s annual revenues are larger than the economic activity in the great majority of countries, equivalent to the GDP of Norway. In many of the countries where it conducts business, ExxonMobil’s sway over politics and security is greater than that of the United States embassy. In Washington, ExxonMobil spends more money lobbying Congress and the White House than any other corporation. Yet despite its outsized influence, it is a black box.
Coll is most recently the author of the New York Times bestseller The Bin Ladens. He is the president of the New America Foundation, a non-partisan public policy institute headquartered in Washington, D.C., and a staff writer for The New Yorker. Previously he worked for twenty years at the Washington Post, where he received a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism in 1990, travelled widely as a foreign correspondent, and served as the Post‘s managing editor between 1998 and 2004. He is the author of six other books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller Ghost Wars. He lives in Washington and New York.
Eligibility:
Books must be published for the first time in the English language, or in English translation, between 16th November 2011 and 15th November 2012. There is no limit to the number of submissions from each publisher/imprint, provided they fit the criteria, and books from all genres except anthologies are eligible. There are no restrictions of gender, age or nationality of authors. Authors who are current employees of the Financial Times or Goldman Sachs, or the close relatives of such employees, are not eligible.
About the Financial Times:
The Financial Times, one of the world’s leading business news organisations, is recognised internationally for its authority, integrity and accuracy. Providing essential news, comment, data and analysis for the global business community, the FT has a combined paid print and digital circulation of more than 600,000 (Deloitte assured, Q3 2012) and a combined print and online average daily readership of 2.1 million people worldwide (PwC assured, May 2012). FT.com has more than 5 million registered users and 313,000 paying digital subscribers. The newspaper has a global print circulation of 287,895 (ABCs, September 2012).
About Goldman Sachs:
The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. is a leading global investment banking, securities and investment management firm that provides a wide range of financial services to a substantial and diversified client base that includes corporations, financial institutions, governments and high-net-worth individuals. Founded in 1869, the firm is headquartered in New York and maintains offices in all major financial centers around the world.