Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power by Steve Coll wins the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award 2012

New York, November 1, 2012: Steve Coll today won the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award 2012 for Private Epmire: ExxonMobil and American Power, published by The Penguin Press, 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 Steve 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.

Steve Coll saw off strong competition to win the £30,000 prize. Each of the five runners-up received a cheque for £10,000.

Lionel Barber said, "Private Empire is forensic, nuanced and extremely well written. It is the story of ExxonMobil, one of the world's most powerful companies. Through a series of compelling narratives, it covers Exxon's huge geopolitical footprint and its influence. No other book on this year's shortlist exposes so much information that we did not know."

Lloyd C. Blankfein commented, "Steve Coll's meticulous reporting led to a compelling work on one of the world's most important and impressive companies. We congratulate him for his effort."

Steve Coll (photo left) author of Private Epmire: ExxonMobil and American Power

Steve 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.


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

The other short listed entries:

• Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and PovertyDaron Acemoglu and James A. 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)