Robert Campeau: the man who bought Bloomingdale’s—and broke American retail doing it
From a post-war Ottawa homebuilder to a swaggering 1980s dealmaker, Robert Campeau rode junk-bond rocket fuel to snag Allied Stores (1986) and then Federated Department Stores—owner of Bloomingdale’s (1988). The plan: use iconic retailers to anchor hulking real-estate plays. The problem: interest bills that cash flow couldn’t cover. When the tide went out, the debt mountain snapped—and in January 1990, Allied and Federated plunged into Chapter 11 in what was then the largest retail bankruptcy in U.S. history. It was a masterclass in speed, leverage, and hubris.

What we cover in this episode

• How a self-taught developer who built Ottawa’s skyline (Place de Ville) convinced Wall Street to fund billion-dollar bids.
  
  
• The Allied ($3.6B) and Federated/Bloomingdale’s ($6.6B) takeovers—and why “own the stores, own the malls” was irresistible in ’86–’88.
  
  
• The cash-flow math that killed the deal: rising rates, softening sales, and ~$8B of IOUs coming due.
  
  
• Fallout: courtrooms, creditors, and the eventual rebuilding of a slimmer Federated that would later become today’s Macy’s, Inc. (after bankruptcy reorg).
  
  

Why it matters
Campeau is the cautionary tale for every “move fast, buy big” fantasy: speed can win auctions, but debt keeps score. If your thesis relies on tomorrow’s growth to pay yesterday’s interest, you’re not running a company—you’re racing a clock.

Want to know more: Going for Broke: How Robert Campeau Bankrupted the Retail Industry, Jolted the Junk Bond Market, and Brought the Booming 80s to a Crashing Halt by John Rothchild

This episode was researched and written by Cherise Lloyd. Some music was created by using UDO. You can find show notes, transcripts, and sources at www.overleveragedoverconfident.com. Follow us on Instagram at Overleveraged Overconfident. Support the show on Patreon and help us keep deep-diving into those spectacular financial fails.. Overleveraged Overconfident is part of Seven Seven Spider, which specializes in deep dive research and financial storytelling. All research uses publicly available sources, so no confidential or regulatory information, just my keen sense of spotting nonsense.

Meet Kenneth Mattson is the central figure in the implosion of an alleged $400 million real estate empire that prosecutors describe as a decade-long Ponzi scheme. He faces a raft of serious federal charges, including seven counts of wire fraud, one count of money laundering, and one count of obstruction of justice, to which he has pleaded not guilty.

This episode was researched and written by Cherise Lloyd. Some music was created by using UDO. You can find show notes, transcripts, and sources at www.overleveragedoverconfident.com. Follow us on Instagram at Overleveraged Overconfident. Support the show on Patreon and help us keep deep-diving into those spectacular financial fails.. Overleveraged Overconfident is part of Seven Seven Spider, which specializes in deep dive research and financial storytelling. All research uses publicly available sources, so no confidential or regulatory information, just my keen sense of spotting nonsense.

 As we dive into six decades of American financial hubris. We'll watch the same old play unfold. Hide the losses, budge the numbers, and believe your own story until the money dries up. We'll go from the smoky back rooms of the 1970s to today's glass-walled FinTech empires, because the rules may change, but the game never does.

In the early 1970s, Franklin National Bank looked like the future of American finance. Its CEO, Harold Gleason, traded a quiet Long Island thrift for a lavish Park Avenue headquarters, convinced he could transform it into an international powerhouse. His secret weapon: Michele Sindona, the Vatican’s banker with mob ties and a taste for high-stakes foreign exchange bets.

This episode unpacks how Gleason’s ambition and Sindona’s schemes turned a conservative regional bank into a fragile giant—and how the façade collapsed in what was, at the time, the largest bank failure in U.S. history.

Host Cherise Lloyd peels back the layers of glamor, denial, and deception that made Franklin’s rise so dazzling—and its fall so inevitable.

🔊 Listen for:

• The Park Avenue move that symbolized Franklin’s “big-league” ambitions
• How Sindona’s currency gambles and hidden embezzlement bled the bank dry
• Why cultural swagger, from The Godfather to Wall Street fantasies, blinded regulators and investors alike

Sources:

St. Peter's Banker: Michele Sindona, Louigi DiFonzo, Power on Earth, Nick Tosches, and NYtimes Archives, as well as others

 As we dive into six decades of American financial hubris. We'll watch the same old play unfold. Hide the losses, budge the numbers, and believe your own story until the money dries up. We'll go from the smoky back rooms of the 1970s to today's glass walled FinTech empires, because the rules may change, but the game never does. As we dive into six decades of American financial hubris. We'll watch the same old play unfold. Hide the losses, budge the numbers, and believe your own story until the money dries up. We'll go from the smoky back rooms of the 1970s to today's glass walled FinTech empires, because the rules may change, but the game never does.

Overleveraged, Overconfident brings you the hubris, the hidden deals, and the lessons every ambitious professional should steal—minus the meltdown.

This episode was researched and written by Cherise Lloyd. Some music was created by using UDO. You can find show notes, transcripts, and sources at www.overleveragedoverconfident.com. Follow us on Instagram at Overleveraged Overconfident. Support the show on Patreon and help us keep deep-diving into those spectacular financial fails.. Overleveraged Overconfident is part of Seven Seven Spider, which specializes in deep dive research and financial storytelling. All research uses publicly available sources, so no confidential or regulatory information, just my keen sense of spotting nonsense.

What do you get when two Wall Street titans turn a financial feud into a public spectacle? An activist-investing meltdown that plays out like middle school drama—with $1 billion on the line. In this episode, we dive into the infamous slugfest between Carl Icahn and Bill Ackman over Herbalife, the company Ackman called a pyramid scheme—and Icahn called a golden opportunity to make him squirm.

Expect:

• CNBC’s live on-air slap fight that left moderators speechless
• A 330-slide presentation that feels more like a cry for help
• Carl’s refusal to be bullied—and his parting shots, delivered with the enthusiasm of a 12-year-old.
• And the moment this grudge stopped being about Herbalife and started being about ego

This is not just finance—it’s personal. And petty. And perfect.

This episode was researched and written by Cherise Lloyd. Some music was created by using UDO. You can find show notes, transcripts, and sources at www.overleveragedoverconfident.com. Follow us on Instagram at Overleveraged Overconfident. Support the show on Patreon and help us keep deep-diving into those spectacular financial fails.. Overleveraged Overconfident is part of Seven Seven Spider, which specializes in deep dive research and financial storytelling. All research uses publicly available sources, so no confidential or regulatory information, just my keen sense of spotting nonsense.

What do you get when two Wall Street titans turn a financial feud into a public spectacle? An activist-investing meltdown that plays out like middle school drama—with $1 billion on the line. In this episode, we dive into the infamous slugfest between Carl Icahn and Bill Ackman over Herbalife, the company Ackman called a pyramid scheme—and Icahn called a golden opportunity to make him squirm.

Expect:

• CNBC’s live on-air slap fight that left moderators speechless
• A 330-slide presentation that feels more like a cry for help
• Carl’s refusal to be bullied—and his parting shots, delivered with the enthusiasm of a 12-year-old.
• And the moment this grudge stopped being about Herbalife and started being about ego

This is not just finance—it’s personal. And petty. And perfect.

This episode was researched and written by Cherise Lloyd. Some music was created by using UDO. You can find show notes, transcripts, and sources at www.overleveragedoverconfident.com. Follow us on Instagram at Overleveraged Overconfident. Support the show on Patreon and help us keep deep-diving into those spectacular financial fails.. Overleveraged Overconfident is part of Seven Seven Spider, which specializes in deep dive research and financial storytelling. All research uses publicly available sources, so no confidential or regulatory information, just my keen sense of spotting nonsense.

This Spreadsheet Could Ruin Your Life (And Definitely Your Bonus)
You think it’s just Excel—until it’s not. In this episode of Overleveraged, Overconfident, we unpack five real-world spreadsheet fails that triggered $24 million losses, $6 billion meltdowns, government investigations, and even global austerity policies. From Barclays hiding rows in a bankruptcy deal to Fannie Mae's $1.2 billion “oops,” and JP Morgan’s $6B model built by one guy in London with a PhD and no backup plan, it’s a masterclass in how bad inputs = career-ending outputs. If you've ever copy-pasted a formula and prayed no one noticed…this one's for you.

Come for the Excel horror stories, stay for the schadenfreude.

This episode was researched and written by Cherise Lloyd. Some music was created by using UDO. You can find show notes, transcripts, and sources at www.overleveragedoverconfident.com. Follow us on Instagram at Overleveraged Overconfident. Support the show on Patreon and help us keep deep-diving into those spectacular financial fails.. Overleveraged Overconfident is part of Seven Seven Spider, which specializes in deep dive research and financial storytelling. All research uses publicly available sources, so no confidential or regulatory information, just my keen sense of spotting nonsense.

In the mid-2000s, a little-known banker named Osman Semerci rocketed from relative obscurity to Global Head of FICC at Merrill Lynch—not through decades of seasoning, but by threatening to walk.

This episode dissects how Semerci’s audacity—and Merrill’s hunger for mortgage profits—fueled an era of breathtaking risk. We follow the arc from boardroom brinkmanship to the multibillion-dollar CDO bets that left the bank teetering as the subprime crisis erupted.

Host Cherise Lloyd peels back the layers of power, posture, and misplaced confidence that turned a career leap into a cautionary tale—and helped push Merrill toward its $50 billion fire-sale to Bank of America.

🔊 Listen for:

• The negotiation that landed Semerci Wall Street’s most coveted seat
• How structured credit profits masked catastrophic exposure
• Why swagger, not spreadsheets, drove one of finance’s biggest miscalculations

Overleveraged, Overconfident brings you the hubris, the hidden memos, and the lessons every ambitious professional should steal—minus the meltdown.

This episode was researched and written by Cherise Lloyd. Some music was created by using UDO. You can find show notes, transcripts, and sources at www.overleveragedoverconfident.com. Follow us on Instagram at Overleveraged Overconfident. Support the show on Patreon and help us keep deep-diving into those spectacular financial fails.. Overleveraged Overconfident is part of Seven Seven Spider, which specializes in deep dive research and financial storytelling. All research uses publicly available sources, so no confidential or regulatory information, just my keen sense of spotting nonsense.

When a half-billion-dollar investment goes sideways, sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. Meet JC Flowers and John Corzine—two Goldman Sachs alumni whose friendship survived boardroom betrayals, political scandals, and a spectacular fall from grace, but couldn't survive their own hubris.

After Refco's spectacular 6-day collapse wiped out $3 billion in shareholder value, private equity kingpin JC Flowers saw opportunity in the wreckage. Years later, he'd recruit his old Goldman buddy John Corzine—fresh off losing the New Jersey governor's race—to transform the sleepy commodity broker MF Global into an investment banking powerhouse.

What could go wrong when you hand a firm 1/75th the size of Goldman Sachs to a man who once threw up in a garbage can after being ousted from Wall Street's most prestigious bank? Everything, as it turns out.

From Flowers' billion-dollar government-subsidized wins to Corzine's catastrophic European debt gamble, this is the story of two men who confused a rowboat for a cruise ship and tried to ride out a financial storm. Featuring illegal customer fund transfers, a Global Treasurer nicknamed "the grave digger," and the fastest way to lose other people's money while collecting your own bonuses.

Because some people never learn the first time—and some Wall Street networks run deeper than friendship.

This episode was researched and written by Cherise Lloyd. Some music was created by using UDO. You can find show notes, transcripts, and sources at www.overleveragedoverconfident.com. Follow us on Instagram at Overleveraged Overconfident. Support the show on Patreon and help us keep deep-diving into those spectacular financial fails.. Overleveraged Overconfident is part of Seven Seven Spider, which specializes in deep dive research and financial storytelling. All research uses publicly available sources, so no confidential or regulatory information, just my keen sense of spotting nonsense.

What happens when a small-town hockey player from Minnesota’s Iron Range swaps his stick for a Bloomberg terminal and $26 billion in other people’s money? You get Phil Falcone—the hedge fund king who shorted subprime to riches, then torched it all, borrowing from his own fund, rigging bond markets, and backing a satellite network that nearly broke GPS nationwide. This is decision deafness in action: how a man who couldn’t hear “no” went from billionaire to pitching crypto TV—with his name misspelled in the deck.

This episode was researched and written by Cherise Lloyd. Some music was created by using UDO. You can find show notes, transcripts, and sources at www.overleveragedoverconfident.com. Follow us on Instagram at Overleveraged Overconfident. Support the show on Patreon and help us keep deep-diving into those spectacular financial fails.. Overleveraged Overconfident is part of Seven Seven Spider, which specializes in deep dive research and financial storytelling. All research uses publicly available sources, so no confidential or regulatory information, just my keen sense of spotting nonsense.