CFO Bookshelf · 2026-03-01 · 53 min
They called him 'Chainsaw Al.' In 1996, Al Dunlap took over a struggling Sunbeam and did what he did best: he cut. He let go 6,000 employees and closed 18 factories. The stock price? It nearly quadrupled in less than two years. To Wall Street, he was a superstar. But the 'turnaround' was a house of cards. To meet impossible targets, Dunlap used 'cookie-jar' accounting and 'channel stuffing' - basically booking future sales today to hide massive losses. By 1998, the board fired him, the SEC banned him for life, and Sunbeam was headed for bankruptcy. So, was he a genius who saved companies, or a corporate 'psychopath' who destroyed them for a quick buck? In this episode, I bring back my friend Gordon Graham, the author of The Intrepid Brotherhood, who knows what it's like to work for a psychopathic leader. We explore this topic as we go through some of the key ideas in John Byrne's book, Chainsaw.
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