Michael Lissack

Michael Lissack (born 1958) is an American business executive, author, business consultant and director of the Institute for the Study of Coherence and Emergence.

Lisack was managing director in the municipal bond department at Smith Barney, and came into prominence as the whistleblower, who exposed a yield burning scandal in the 1990s, whereby financial firms made illegal profits from the structuring of U.S. government investment portfolios associated with municipal bonds.

Lissack received his BA in American Civilization and Political Economy in 1979 from Williams College, and his MBA in Business from Yale University in 1981. Later in his career in 2000 Lissack received a doctor of business administration degree from Henley Management College in the United Kingdom.

After his graduation from Yale, Lissack started at Smith Barney, where he became managing director and served in this position until 1995. Since 1999 he is director of the Institute for the Study of Coherence and Emergence. From 1999 to 2004, Lissack also served as the editor-in-chief of Emergence: A Journal of Complexity Issues in Organizations and Management now known as E:CO.

Lissack was a candidate for county commissioner in Collier County, Florida, in 2002 and in 2006. He briefly taught business and public policy at the Central European University. Lissack is also the president of the American Society for Cybernetics.

In 1994, Lissack exposed a major yield burning scandal on Wall Street. The issue was eventually settled by a number of firms for over $200 million, to which Lissack was entitled to at least 15% per federal whistleblower laws. Lissack used some of these funds for charitable purposes including endowing a professorship in social responsibility and personal ethics at his alma mater, Williams College.

In February 1998, Lissack entered into a voluntary agreement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission whereby he was banned from the securities industry for five years and paid a $30,000 fine, as part of an arrangement by Lissack's legal team for Lissack to be on record as taking some responsibility for the scandal. Later that year Lissack was charged by the Manhattan District Attorney's office with making online solicitations for people to harass executives of his former employer, Salmon Smith Barney, by calling them at company headquarters and in some instances their homes. He pleaded guilty to second-degree harassment (a violation and lesser offense than the misdemeanor harassment charge with which he was originally charged ), admitting he sent phony e-mails to Salomon Smith Barney employees. As part of the guilty plea, Lissack was not sentenced to jail and paid no fine.

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