Stanley McKnight is at the top of his game, a private banker with charm, talent, and more than a bit of luck. When he is promoted by his private bank, Laville & Cie, to take on their largest Russian clients, it looks like his star will only continue to rise. As the excesses of his multibillionaire client, the oligarch Gagarin, grow ever more extreme, McKnight starts to fall for the lifestyle of travel, drugs, women and fast cars, and discovers that work can also be fun. As McKnight follows Gagarin around the world, coming up with new ways to skirt the law and wash his money, he must play an increasingly feverish game of cat-and-mouse between the American government, and the state-sanctioned Russian mob.
A tale of outsized egos, appetites, and ambitions, this completely true, heart-stopping story tells of one man, 20 million dollars, and the most expensive game of poker ever played.
Glittering with perception and anecdote, The Death of the Banker is at once a panorama of twentieth-century finance and a guide to the new era of giant mutual funds on Wall Street.
Argues that the stock market crash of 1929 and subsequent Depression occurred as a result of poor decisions on the part of four central bankers who jointly attempted to reconstruct international finance by reinstating the gold standard.
From award winning criminologist R. Barri Flowers and the bestselling author of Murder at the Pencil Factory and The Sex Slave Murders, comes a powerful new historical true crime short, Murder of the Banker’s Daughter: The Killing of Marion Parker. On December 15, 1927, 12-year-old Marion Parker, daughter of a prominent banker was brazenly abducted from her junior high school in Los Angeles, California in a bizarre ransom scheme. Two days later, the girl’s dismembered remains were left behind by a brutal killer, destroying a family and unnerving the entire city. This caused pandemonium as the perpetrator managed to evade immediate capture, leading to a manhunt by authorities unlike any in recent memory. The horror of the crime was reminiscent of one 14 years earlier involving 13-year-old Mary Phagan, who was murdered at a pencil factory in Atlanta, and 5 years later when the 20-month-old son of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh was abducted from the family’s New Jersey home and brutally slain. The killer of Marion Parker was identified as former bank messenger William Edward Hickman, a 19-year-old with a score to settle and an appetite for killing. The career criminal’s capture, trial, and ultimate fate captured the public’s imagination, while putting attention on the age-old vulnerability of children in this country targeted by child predators and the often tragic consequences that rings true to this day. Included with the story are bonus excerpts of R. Barri Flowers' bestselling true crime shorts, Murder at the Pencil Factory and Mass Murder in the Sky, as well as an excerpt of the author’s international bestselling true crime book, The Sex Slave Murders.
During bull and bear markets, there is a group of hedge funds and professional traders which have been consistently outperforming traditional investment strategies for the past 30 odd years. They have shown remarkable uncorrelated performance and in the great bear market of 2008 they had record gains. These traders are highly secretive about their proprietary trading algorithms and often employ top PhDs in their research teams. Yet, it is possible to replicate their trading performance with relatively simplistic models. These traders are trend following cross asset futures managers, also known as CTAs. Many books are written about them but none explain their strategies in such detail as to enable the reader to emulate their success and create their own trend following trading business, until now. Following the Trend explains why most hopefuls fail by focusing on the wrong things, such as buy and sell rules, and teaches the truly important parts of trend following. Trading everything from the Nasdaq index and T-bills to currency crosses, platinum and live hogs, there are large gains to be made regardless of the state of the economy or stock markets. By analysing year by year trend following performance and attribution the reader will be able to build a deep understanding of what it is like to trade futures in large scale and where the real problems and opportunities lay. Written by experienced hedge fund manager Andreas Clenow, this book provides a comprehensive insight into the strategies behind the booming trend following futures industry from the perspective of a market participant. The strategies behind the success of this industry are explained in great detail, including complete trading rules and instructions for how to replicate the performance of successful hedge funds. You are in for a potentially highly profitable roller coaster ride with this hard and honest look at the positive as well as the negative sides of trend following.
"Immersive, satisfying, tense---and timely: This is probably happening for real right now."--Lee Child "First-rate...Slick, heart-hammering entertainment."--The New York Times Book Review On an early morning in November, a private plane bound for Geneva drops off the radar, its wreckage uncovered days later in the Alps. Among the disappeared is Matthew Werner, an insider at Swiss United, a powerful offshore bank. His young widow, Annabel, begins a desperate search for answers and quickly determines that Matthew's death was no accident. She soons finds herself in a terrifying cat-and-mouse chase, on the run from his powerful enemies, who will stop at nothing to hide the truth. Meanwhile, ambitious society journalist Marina Tourneau has finally landed at the top. With her engagement to Grant Ellis, she is set to become one of the elite she has spent a career covering, but, after the death of her mentor, she agrees to dig into one more story: Swiss United. In doing so, Marina uncovers information that implicates some of the most powerful men in the financial world, including a few who are too close to home. The story also could be the answer to Annabel's heartbreaking search--and save her life--if Marina chooses to publish it...
The iconic Inspector De Vincenzi makes his debut in this classic Italian murder mystery set in 1930s Milan When a body is discovered in a Milan apartment, Inspector De Vincenzi is on the case. The apartment happens to belong to an old university friend, Aurigi—and the body turns out to be that of Aurigi's banker. The eventual discovery of a phial of prussic acid casts even more suspiscion upon the apartment’s owner, leaving De Vincenzi torn between his sense of duty and his loyalty to an old comrade . . . This intensely dramatic mystery from the father of the Italian crime novel, Augusto de Angelis, is the first to feature his most famous creation—Inspector De Vincenzi.
