Rating: 
Summary: Truth is Stranger than Fiction
Review: Corporate espionage, money laundering, greed, and one of the most bizarre whistle-blowing cases the FBI had ever seen. So is the twisted tale told in Kurt Eichenwald's The Informant. And most bizarre of all, its all true. Eichenwald, a senior writer for the New York Times, recalls the events that occurred during the 1990's at the Archer Daniels Midland Company when one of its own executives, Mark Whitacre, became a mole for the FBI. According to Whitacre, the company was working with international competitors to fix prices globally on their products, specifically lysine, a feed additive.Archer Daniels Midland is a Fortune 500 company located in Decatur, Illinois, and was at the time led by its chairman and chief executive officer, Dwayne Andreas, a politically connected millionaire. ADM is one of the world's largest grain producers, boasting that it is the "Supermarket to the World." Among other things, the company supplies many food manufacturers around the world with food additives such as citric acid, lysine, and corn syrup. To maintain large profit margins, however, the company had acquired many corrupt and illegal practices, all to be dissolved by Mark Whitacre. Whitacre began his career at ADM at a relatively young age. With a doctorate in biochemistry, he was the president of the bioproducts division at ADM. Whitacre began his work with the FBI in 1992 when ADM began investigating corporate espionage by a competitor. It was believed that a major Japanese competitor, Ajinomoto, had planted a virus in one of ADM's lysine plants. The virus was believed to be the cause of abnormally low production levels. It was further suspected that the competitor had an employee working undercover at ADM to sabotage the plant. Once the investigation began, however, Whitacre became nervous that he would look suspicious because he spent so much time communicating with the foreign competitors on other matters, including illegal price fixing. He was scared that he would be fingered as a suspect. Because of this fear, and others to be disclosed later, Whitacre broke down and told the FBI of the illegal deals going on at the company. The FBI was curious from the beginning however as to why such a highly paid executive would be willing to cooperate with the FBI to bring down such a major conspiracy. However, they were thrilled and anxious to begin work with Whitacre; it was rare to have such a prominent member of a company working as an informant to the FBI. Whitacre agreed to work with the FBI so long as he was granted immunity. The FBI in turn agreed, so long as Whitacre agreed to be honest and disclose any and all wrong doing that he was aware of at ADM and cooperate with the FBI to document the crimes. It seemed like a relatively simple plan, but nothing in this case would ever be simple...
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting look into the White Collar World
Review: Definitely not Grisham, but all of the intrigue is still there. In fact, many of the events that take place would never fly in a fiction work...they'd be thought too outrageous. For Eichenwald to keep me, a mostly science-fiction reader captivated throughout all six-hundred pages is reason enough for me to recommend the book to most anyone. Steadily entertaining development for you action-oriented readers and just enough to whet the appetite of any conspiracy theorists out there.
Rating:
Summary: An engaging page turner
Review: For those who enjoy "true crime" this book is a must read. Over more than 500 pages, Kurt Eichenwald walks the reader through the tangled web of a complex federal criminal investigation. Few actors in this drama, whether FBI, DOJ, the leaders at Archer-Daniels-Midland, or their competitors come out looking particularly good. While the ADM executives are largely portrayed as venal, self protective, and arrogant (no real surprise), the turf battles and inter-agency warfare conducted among the elements of Justice are sad to read. The main character, ADM executive Mark Whitacre's shenanagins will exhaust all but the most patient readers, though one can only come away with some level of frustration at the end result, where ADM executives, who Whitacre captures on type in obvious price fixing collusion, walk away with largely financial, as opposed to penal sentences. In addition, the tireless efforts of the agents assigned to the case get lost in the shuffle when the lawyers take over and immediately undermine and second guess the investigative techniques engaged in by the FBI.
Rating:
Summary: PURE GREED
Review: If you like to read books about business and industry this is a superb book to read it is unbelieveabe that the informant the person bookis abouut could be such a moron and have such business power
Rating:
Summary: Is Truth Stranger Than Fiction?
Review: On the rare occasions when the banal details of corporate crime are uncovered, developed and prosecuted, the inside story is sometimes difficult to believe. Even more often, these stories, particularly those involving complex financial chicanery, fail to survive the conversion to film or print. An obvious exception is "The Informant," Kurt Eichenwald's extraordinary new book about the Archer Daniels Midland Company price-fixing scandal in the mid-1990s. Mr. Eichenwald, an award-winning journalist at The New York Times, has balanced a cast of a nearly unimaginable characters with meticulous reporting and sourcing built on endless of hours of government tapes, documentary evidence and interviews. Mr. Eichenwald's masterfully constructed narrative describes how ADM, the self-styled "Supermarket to the World," conspired with international competitors to corner food additive markets. The book focuses on Mark Whitacre, the wildly contradictory former ADM executive whose secret cooperation with the FBI apparently was intended to hide his own crimes. As Mr. Eichenwald writes, the book is about the "malleable nature of the truth," and how nothing in the ADM case was necessarily what it appeared to be. Along the way, the story is told in a way that "lend[s] temporary credence to the many lies told in this investigation," according to Mr. Eichenwald. In the end, the book accomplishes what few of its kind have: it has woven an otherwise tedious collection of technical and legal details and deceptions into one of the best tales of corporate crime in the past 20 years. As the federal government found in its development of the ADM case, it's difficult to humanize corporate schemes, whether in civil or criminal litigation, or in the news or entertainment media. Mr. Eichenwald not only overcomes this obstacle, he has succeeded in producing a book that reads like a thriller. At one point in the book, in fact, a few of the characters even question whether Mr. Whitacre is acting out scenes from a John Grisham best-seller, "The Firm." Mr. Eichenwald also is fortunate to inherit an amazing cast of characters that includes not only Mr. Whitacre, the Andreas family, and high-level law enforcement agencies but also ADM's political network -- which at various times has included Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, Bob Dole, Dan Quayle, former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney, and powerful Washington and New York law firms, among others. My admiration of the author emanates in part from his reporting of the Prudential-Bache financial scandal in the early 1990s, both in The New York Times and in his book "Serpent on the Rock." As a part of the legal team that successfully represented 5,800 victimized investors in civil litigation against Pru-Bache, I believe Mr. Eichenwald was unequalled among journalists in his command of that subject matter. Even then, where "Serpent on the Rock" succeeded nicely in chronicling the Pru-Bache scandal, "The Informant" excels. I believe that this book puts Mr. Eichenwald into the elite company of Jonathan Harr ("A Civil Action"), James B. Stewart ("Den of Thieves" and "Blind Eye"), Ken Auletta ("Greed and Glory on Wall Street"), and Bryan Burrough and John Helyar ("Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco").
Rating:
Summary: Would be great fiction...and it's true!
Review: The story starts out as a somewhat interesting investigation of Archer Daniels Midland price fixing, and then delves into the fascinating web of deceipt, back stabbing, and a bizarre plot to become CEO of ADM by Mark Whitacre, a wunderkind ADM executive, and FBI informant in the price fixing investigation. Eichenwald give little hints along the way that there's more than meets the eye, and by the end of the book, reveals the extent of the plot at ADM and by Whitacre that has to be read to be believed. The fairly arcane and complicated scheming throughout the book comes across fairly transparent, where a lesser writer would tend to make it fairly dense reading.
Rating: 
Summary: A script pretending to be a book
Review: This book read like a script for a movie. It consists to a large extent of dialogue interspersed with description such as 'they got out on the xth floor'. It's hard not to get the impression that the script was rejected but somehow managed to find itself a publisher. The author seems to have done little more than string together masses of tape and court proceedings with basic vocabulary. It reads like a newspaper article that has radioactively morphed into more-than-book length. I was frustrated that the story did not stay with the perspective of one person and their understanding of the situation but jumped all over the place. This may work well in a movie where you have visual representations of the different characters, but in book form it created a very superficial story. Also, the relationship between M. Whitacre and his wife, as narrated, seems highly implausible. It would be interesting to read a book written by the wife. Some professional newspaper writers successfully morph into brilliant book writers. Eichenwald is not one of them.
Rating:
Summary: Truth IS Stranger than Fiction!
Review: This book should be required reading in every MBA school in America. Every student who wants to work for Corporate America needs to read this. If nothing else than to see how their decisions can affect even the most powerful companies. This book details an incredibly complex scheme by what is, in essence, the most politically connected corporation in America to fix prices in the lysine market. Lysine is used by the livestock industry to grow animals larger and faster. But, the conspiracy hardly stops there. ADM used similar price fixing techniques in other food additives they produced. This is just the beginning of the criminal and unethical behavior of the Archer Daniels Midland Company and the management of that company, not to mention the behavior of the companies that ADM is doing "business" with. Mr. Eichenwald has done an excellent job of detailing this complex conspiracy and telling an incredible, and often entertaining, story. You'd swear that this was a work of fiction. When reading this book, don't be afraid to go back and even put the book down for a few minutes to consider what you've just read. This is a very complex book. Which isn't to say it is difficult reading. It is not, but there are many details to sift through and the details sometimes become more mind-boggling as you go on.
Rating:
Summary: Passing True Life Drama
Review: This book was hyped by one of its reviewers as comparable to "A Civil Action" by Jonathan Harr. Actually, it is not as good as that book, but it is a generally diverting story about corporate greed and one odd insider's attempt to expose this dirty seam of capitalism. That the main character turns out to be a not-very-likeable fellow who has a problem with believability adds a certain twist to the proceedings, but the story has so many skeins and personalities that it is sometimes difficult for the reader to keep all the players and machinations straight. Nonetheless, it is worth the effort and I recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Dynamite true story of corporate crimes
Review: This is a non-stop action-packed book about nefarious corporate crimes at ADM, an enormous food products company based in Decatur, Illinois. This book follows the amazing (and at many times unbelievable, but true) twists and turns of events in the years following an initial FBI investigation into suspected corporate espionage at ADM. The investigation quickly led to price fixing and anti-trust issues based on information supplied by "informant" Mark Whitacre. And it moves from there into other corporate crimes, driven by greed. At first the story seems to be about a simple investigation into price fixing by ADM and many of its international "competitors" (even though the company viewed its customers as the true enemy). The book is written as the events turned out for the FBI, so even though the reader is presented with Whitacre being a strange man, the reader is led to believe that it is because he is stressed about being an informant, worried about being caught by ADM and threatened (as he saw in many fictional movies and books). But it turns into much more and all is not as it seems. Parts of this book deal with complex financial and corporate issues, but Eichenwald deals with them in a way that is easy to understand. The book is an incredibly easy read and even though the length can look danuting, I found myself flying through the book and always wanting to see what happens next. So in a sense it is an amazing page turner, just as much as any best selling thrilling novel. I highly recommend this and be warned that this will make you skeptical of corporate greed and misdeeds and you'll know that many corporate exces were all criminals long before the downfall of Enron.
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