Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Bennett CerfBennett Cerf
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Session:         Page of 1029

the stock, because that brought the original stock down to about $8.50. When we went on the stock exchange, the market had already wobbled a little bit but our stock opened the first day at thirty-two and a quarter. That meant about forty for the original shares because they had been split four to three. We went on the stock exchange in 1961 on September 20.

Well, later that Fall came the dawn. There was a terrible break in the market. Our stock, along with every other pub- lisher's stock and most other new stocks that had gone flying up, went flying down just as fast as they went up, back to what they were worth. Random House shares went all the way down from thirty-two to about $9 a share. In other words, it went down to just above what we had issued it at. It never went below. Lots of stocks did. Random House hovered for months just a little above its issue price. That would have been fine at the time that we brought it out; but after it had gone up to the equivalent of about thirty-four, to see it back to nine did fearful things to my ego.

I used to be afraid to go out at night. I'd think people were saying, “There's that incompetent Cerf, whose stock has gone to hell.” There were a lot of people who would accuse you, you know. When you make money on stock, you immediately think it's because of your own genius; but when your stocks are going down, you look around to see whom you can blame. I remember that one man came up to me in a theater one night and said, “Hey, what are you doing wrong with your company?" This was while our stock was about twice what it had come out at,





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help