From Manila to Wall Street: An Immigrant’s Journey With America’s First Black Tycoon

From Butch Meily, trusted public relations strategist to Reginald Lewis, the history-making African American dealmaker, comes an eye-opening business narrative. From Manila to Wall Street tells two stories: the first includes daring corporate takeovers, an exorbitant global lifestyle, and the fatal brain tumor that claimed Lewis’s life at age 50. Lewis struggled to reach the top, only to see his attempt to become the first African American-controlled company listed on the New York Stock Exchange fail and his Hamptons mansion burn to the ground. The second story is that of a young Filipino immigrant at Lewis’s side. Meily reaches the highest tier of corporate public relations in New York, making a million dollars in one year. Yet, after his wife leaves him, Meily discovers that power, glory, and riches can bring loneliness and isolation. He began his relationship with Lewis as an employee and became his closest adviser and first-hand witness to the tormented, solitary man behind the image of a wildly successful takeover king.

＂Butch Meily is the quintessential Bud Fox of the movie Wall Street, a brilliant and ambitious participant in the high-stakes game of the 1980s. In the process, he lost perspective of what really matters in his life. He finds redemption in serving his people hit by disasters. And so, his story continues.＂

-Loida Nicolas Lewis, chairman of The Reginald F. Lewis Foundation and former CEO of TLC Beatrice International

＂I worked with Butch Meily and he has captured a moment in time in this thrilling and humorous memoir about his masterful management of Reg Lewis’s profile-from the unprecedented leveraged buyout of Beatrice Foods International to Lewis’s untimely death. I was grateful to see it all and recommend this terrific read.＂

-Chris Atkins, former Vice President, Corporate Communications, Standard & Poor’s

＂From Manila to Wall Street is an up-by-the bootstraps saga of a Black billion-dollar deal-maker and his Filipino public relations advisor. Meily’s memoir offers a fascinating perspective on how to succeed in business despite obstacles everywhere, and revisits how hard the best of the best had to work to overcome those barriers.＂

-Bob Seltzer, former CEO of Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide