The Closer: Deals Change the World

Last summer, a Mexican beer overtook the longtime favorite Bud Light as America’s best-selling beer. It happened amid a customer boycott against Bud Light for a marketing campaign featuring transgender social media personality Dylan Mulvaney. But the story of how Modelo knocked Bud Light from its perch is about much more than a marketing u-turn. It’s an antitrust tale that includes the Department of Justice, and one lawyer...

The Disney we know today came about in a series of game-changing deals led by CEO Bob Iger. But before the entertainment juggernaut bought properties like Pixar and Marvel, Disney, and former CEO Michael Eisner, inked an $19 billion deal for Capital Cities/ABC, Inc. The acquisition kick-started Disney’s transformation from a theme park and animated film business to one of the largest companies in the world. In this episode...

Ray Dalio founded the firm that became the world’s largest hedge fund more than 40 years ago. For years, he promised to retire. Rob Copeland, author of The Fund: Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates, and the Unraveling of a Wall Street Legend, takes us inside the fight to succeed him – a negotiation that lasted almost two decades – exposing Bridgewater’s bizarre culture and Dalio’s leadership failures.

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Once a “unicorn”, WeWork has filed for bankruptcy. The co-working company was once valued at $47 billion, but it’s had a rocky few years, including a failed IPO (it later went public through a special purpose acquisition company) and was battered by the pandemic. But what set WeWork on this falling-from-grace path can be traced back to a failed deal between co-founder Adam Neumann and SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son at the end of...

Back in 2019, an unlikely deal took Wall Street and the oil industry by surprise. Occidental Petroleum, commonly called Oxy, acquired Anadarko for $38 billion, beating out oil supermajor Chevron. But before the company triumphed, CEO Vicki Hollub chased Anadarko for nearly two years in pursuit of further expanding Oxy’s footprint in the Permian Basin. Hear how Hollub stunned the oil world and closed the deal in the elevent...

Google’s path to going public was rather untraditional from the start. The IPO included secret meetings at Denny’s, an infamous Playboy interview and something known as a “dirty” Dutch Auction. The listing ruffled feathers on Wall Street, and set new precedents for tech companies making their market debuts. Featuring Lise Buyer, partner and founder of Class V Group and one of the architects of Google’s IPO.

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When luxury behemoth LVMH tapped Marc Jacobs to lead Louis Vuitton back in 1997, it also acquired the designer’s eponymous label. Hear how the double deal set a new precedent in the industry and helped usher in the era of celebrity and pop culture within the world of high fashion. Featuring Lauren Sherman, fashion journalist for Puck and writer of the Line Sheet newsletter.

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Fearing an energy crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a little-known policy wonk convinced the Biden Administration to help drive down oil prices by using the US’s government emergency supply of oil in a radical new way. Featuring Skanda Amarnath (@IrvingSwisher), Executive Director of the think tank, Employ America.

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The Close...

The story of Jet.com, its founder Marc Lore, and how the startup helped retail giant Walmart sharpen its ecommerce edge against Amazon. Featuring Jason Del Rey, author of Winner Sells All: Amazon, Walmart and the battle for our wallets.

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Deals change the world, and season 3 of The Closer brings you the inside story of those deals, as told by the people who know how it all went down. Each episode features the story of one deal, as host Aimee Keane talks to guests who bring insight into how and why the deal was done, and its broader impact.

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There’s a new season of The Closer coming soon — but before it does, we have a special episode to share from our friends over at The Negotiators podcast.

Last season, we talked to Jeffrey Kessler, the lawyer who represented the US Women's National Team in their equal pay lawsuit against the US Soccer Federation. He said one of the main obstacles was bad leadership. Until it changed.

Today, Cindy Parlow Cohn is president ...

Season 3 of The Closer is coming very soon — and we want to know what you want to hear this season, and why?

It can be a specific deal, or it can be something broad, like a takeover by an underdog, or a question, like: what’s the strangest thing a CEO has said at a closing dinner? You give us a prompt or a challenge and we’ll see if we can find that story for you.

Send us a voice memo now to hello@thecloser.fm and we ju...

Vince McMahon took over his father’s regional wrestling business in the 1980s, and made it into an international media and entertainment juggernaut valued at billions of dollars. This is the story of how McMahon cleverly bulldozed competitors, acquired rivals and capitalized on the public’s hatred of his tactics, as told by writer Abraham Josephine Riesman.

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The Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest private equity firms, has quietly built a deal-making machine that's gobbling up apartments in desirable and gentrifying neighborhoods. A real estate broker working at the center of these deals takes us inside the machine as we explore the trends driving this big bet on scarce, expensive housing.

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In early 2020, the home-sharing platform was poised to make a splashy debut on the public markets later that year. But within just a few weeks, coronavirus brought travel - and Airbnb business - to a halt. Journalist Liz Hoffman takes us inside the financing that saved the Silicon Valley darling and became one of the defining Wall Street deals of the pandemic.

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When private equity-backed PetSmart bought Chewy.com for more than $3bn in 2017, people thought the retailer was doomed. Within just a few years, though, it was one of the most successful private equity turnarounds in history thanks to an executive who stuck to his guns. Reporter Miriam Gottfried takes us inside the transformation.

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We take you inside the final days of Toys R Us with Lauren Hirsch, the reporter who first revealed the iconic company’s impending bankruptcy, and explain what drove the company out of business.

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The US Women's National Soccer Team is among the most decorated teams in the game but, until recently, was paid a fraction of what the men took home. When the players decided to take up the fight for equal pay, they turned to sports attorney Jeffrey Kessler, who built a career out of representing some of the most high-profile athletes in labor disputes with professional leagues. He takes us inside the team’s strategy and r...

From Project Brazen and PRX, this is season 2 of The Closer, out now.

The Closer returns with six dramatic new stories of groundbreaking deals. An epic fight from soccer's biggest stars, a private equity redemption story, the end of a toy empire, and so much more.

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The Closer is a Project Brazen production. Subscribe to Brazen+ on Apple Podcasts or at brazen.fm/plus and get exclusive bon...