Among the Bankers : A Journey Into the Heart of Finance

Joris Luyendijk, an investigative journalist, knew as much about banking as the average person: almost nothing. Bankers, he thought, were ruthless, competitive, bonus-obsessed sharks, irrelevant to his life. And then he was assigned to investigate the financial sector. Joris immersed himself in the City London s equivalent of Wall Street for several years, speaking to over 200 people from the competitive investment bankers and elite hedge-fund managers to downtrodden back-office staff, reviled HR managers, and those made redundant in the regular 'culls'. Breaking the strictly imposed code of secrecy and silence, these insiders spoke on record about what they actually do all day, how they see the toxic environment in which they work, and how they think the uninitiated see them. They confessed to feeling overwhelmed by the intransparency of our financial systems. They admitted that when Lehman Brothers went down in 2008 they hoarded food, put their money in gold, and prepared to evacuate their children to the countryside. They agreed that nothing has changed since the crash. A strange thing happens when you spend time among the bankers . . . you start to sympathize with them. What if the bankers themselves aren't the real enemy? What if the truth about global finance is more sinister than that?" If you could peer inside a megabank what would you see? Cigar-smoking, sharp-suited Masters of the Universe striding about the Square Mile like it is the Olympic village? Joris Luyendijk shows us that the truth is very different. Speaking to over two hundred City insiders he sets out to understand the secretive, complex world of finance. Protected by anonymity, they are refreshingly frank about what they do all day and what makes them tick. They talk about their hopes, fears, how they see themselves and the rest of us and whether they believe things have really changed since the crash in 2008. What emerges is a picture of fear and deep dysfunction. From the toxic short-termism of the 'hire and fire' culture, to technological and mathematical opacity, life-changing rewards in the face of minimal punishments and megabanks that know they are too big to fail, Luyendijk warns we have the blueprint for a new scandal, debacle or even crash. Unique in scope and access, this is an eye-watering examination of how the City really works and why we should all feel alarmed