Gordon Gekko
Gordon Gekko is a fictional character from the popular movie Wall Street. Gekko was portrayed by actor-producer Michael Douglas, in a performance that was to win him an Oscar for Best Actor. In the film, naive stock broker Bud Fox, played by Charlie Sheen, comes to work for the ultra-aggressive, power-hungry Gekko, and ultimately blossoms under the wing of the larger-than-life stock market guru. However, Fox is arrested at the end for insider trading, whilst it is unclear whether or not Gekko would also have been indicted.
Gekko's infamous "Greed is Good" speech was an excellent representation of the profit-driven world of investment banking in the late 1980s, and still remains relevant today. Gekko has since become a symbol of 1980s corporate greed.
The character Gekko made the argument against well entrenched corporate managers, saying they were taking advantage of shareholders. He compared the role of early American business leaders like the Carnegies and Mellons who only managed in which businesses they had significant investments with that of well paid company senior executives who owned very little of the company's stock.
He asserted to shareholders at a company meeting: "You own the company. That's right -- you, the stockholder. And you are all being royally screwed over by these, these bureaucrats, with their luncheons, their hunting and fishing trips, their corporate jets and golden parachutes...Teldar Paper has 33 different vice presidents, each earning over 200 thousand dollars a year. Now, I have spent the last two months analyzing what all these guys do, and I still can't figure it out. One thing I do know is that our paper company lost 110 million dollars last year, and I'll bet that half of that was spent in all the paperwork going back and forth between all these vice presidents."
He declared that as an asset stripper he was "not a destroyer of companies" but a "liberator of them." And most famously in the film, he asserted "The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed -- for lack of a better word -- is good.
Greed is right. Greed works.
Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms -- greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed -- you mark my words -- will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA."
Representative Quotes from the Movie Wall Street:
"I just got on the board of the Bronx Zoo....Cost me a mil. [Laughs to self] That's the thing about WASPS...they love animals, can't stand people."
""Pull over, Mohammed.""
""Systolic, dyastolic, cheaper than one visit to a doctor.""
""I didn't know we had a meeting today, Sport.""
""Bonjour Monsieur Buddy [to son]""
Gekko is based loosely on corporate raider Ivan Boesky, who gave a similar speech on greed at the University of California in 1986.
In 2003, AFI named him number 24 of the top 50 movie villains of all time