The Spider Network: The Wild Story of a Maths Genius, a Gang of Backstabbing Bankers, and One of the Greatest Scams in Financial History - Couverture souple

Enrich, David

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0753557509 ISBN 13 : 9780753557501

Editeur : WH Allen, 2017

A propos du livre

Quatrième de couverture :

Each day your financial life is governed by interest rates—your credit card, your car payments, your mortgage, your college loans. It would be natural to assume that those rates are set in the marketplace, the product of supply and demand and the usual intervention by the Federal Reserve. This is the story of the guys who gleefully realized that you had no idea what was actually going on.

In 2006, an oddball group of bankers and traders from some of the world’s largest financial institutions made a startling realization: Libor—the London interbank offered rate, which determines the interest rates on trillions of dollars in loans worldwide—was set daily by a small team of easily manipulated functionaries, and that they could reap huge profits by nudging it to suit their trading portfolios. Tom Hayes, a brilliant but troubled math genius, became the linchpin of a wild alliance that included a French trader nicknamed “Gollum”; a Kazakh chicken farmer turned something short of a financial whiz kid; a Swiss banker with a tendency to drunkenly accost women in bars; a karaoke-loving executive who would falsely boast about his role in a 1990s rock band; and a not-very-bright broker who spent much of his leisure time wiping out on his motorcycle. Hayes’s circle would produce the era’s most covert and most substantial financial scandal—until it all unraveled in a spectacularly vicious fashion.

Deeply investigated by award-winning Wall Street Journal reporter David Enrich, The Spider Network is not only a rollicking account of the scam but a provocative examination of a crooked financial system, full of wheeler-dealers able to concoct elaborate connections between dollars and doughnuts, but not their rapacious actions and the law.

Présentation de l'éditeur :

Shortlisted for the FT & McKinsey Book Prize!
‘Will snare you in its web of deceit, lies, corruption, manipulation and colourful characters. [a] brilliant investigative exposé’ - Harlan Coben, bestselling thriller author

‘Reads like a fast-paced John le Carré thriller, and never lets up’ - New York Times book review
In 2006, an oddball group of bankers, traders and brokers from some of the largest financial institutions made a startling realization: Libor―the London interbank offered rate, which determines the interest rates on trillions in loans worldwide―was set daily by a small group of easily manipulated administrators, and that they could reap huge profits by nudging it fractions of a percent to suit their trading portfolios. Tom Hayes, a brilliant but troubled mathematician, became the lynchpin of a wild alliance that included a prickly French trader nicknamed “Gollum”; the broker “Abbo,” who liked to publicly strip naked when drinking; a nervous Kazakh chicken farmer known as “Derka Derka”; a broker known as “Village” (short for “Village Idiot”) who racked up huge expense account bills; an executive called “Clumpy” because of his patchwork hair loss; and a broker uncreatively nicknamed “Big Nose” who had once been a semi-professional boxer. This group generated incredible riches ―until it all unraveled in spectacularly vicious, backstabbing fashion.

With exclusive access to key characters and evidence, The Spider Network is not only a rollicking account of the scam, but also a provocative examination of a financial system that was crooked throughout.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: WH Allen
• Date d'édition: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0753557509
• ISBN 13: 9780753557501
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 496