Thomas Gresham was arguably the first true wizard of global finance. He rose through the mercantile worlds of London and Antwerp to become the hidden power behind three out of the five Tudor monarchs. Today his name is remembered in economic doctrines, in the institutions he founded and in the City of London's position at the economic centre of the earth. Without Gresham, England truly might have become a vassal state. His manoeuvring released Elizabeth from a crushing burden of debt and allowed for vital military preparations during the wars of religion that set Europe ablaze. Yet his deepest loyalties have remained enigmatic, until now. Drawing on vast new research and several startling discoveries, the great Tudor historian John Guy recreates Gresham's life and singular personality with astonishing intimacy. He reveals a calculating survivor, flexible enough to do business with merchants and potentates no matter their religious or ideological convictions. Yet his personal relationships were disturbingly transactional. He was a figure of cold unsentimentality even to members of his own family. Elizabeth I found herself at odds with Gresham's ambitions. In their collisions and wary accommodations, we see our own conflicts between national sovereignty and global capital foreshadowed. A story of adventure and jeopardy, greed and cunning, loyalties divided, mistaken or betrayed, this is a biography fit for a merchant prince.

What do a U.S. lawyer and a Singaporean banker have in common? When it comes to infrastructure finance, Mitchell A. Silk and Seth Tan have just about seen it all. They have witnessed the inner workings of international development projects-ranging from bilateral economic agreements between countries to multibillion-dollar infrastructure financings-from both legal and financial angles. In alternating chapters, they share their experiences over the last several decades working on infrastructure projects on almost every continent and at the highest levels of government and corporate organizations. Infrastructure finance took off in the 1980s. Today, it is a major focus as the world grapples with the challenges of private capital mobilization to meet the giant global infrastructure funding gap. Mitchell A. Silk and Seth Tan were there for its growth into a giant industry. Praise for Dancing With Giants "An extraordinary collection of real world experiences from the front lines of global infrastructure finance. Mitch Silk and Seth Tan, two leading practitioners of infrastructure finance over the past 30 years, illuminate the essential role of private investment in meeting the world's energy needs." - Andrés Gluski, President and CEO, The AES Corporation "Infrastructure in the next 30 years may be very different from today or not yet exist as needs will change and technology advancement can offer new solutions. But the past can offer good principles to follow for future development. It is great to read about two practitioners, Mitch and Seth, who have lived and breathed infrastructure in the last 30 years." - Marie Lam-Frendo, CEO, Global Infrastructure Hub (a G20 initiative) About the Authors Mitchell A. Silk Mitchell is the immediate past Assistant Secretary for International Markets at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. In that position, Mitch designed and implemented an inter-agency growth initiative in international infrastructure finance, and the $94 billion CARES Act programs that benefitted over 700,000 American aviation industry workers. Prior to joining U.S. Treasury, Mitch was a senior partner in the global law practice of Allen & Overy in Hong Kong and New York, where he specialized in energy and infrastructure matters, asset management, and banking and finance. Mitch is fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese, and his favorite language of Yiddish. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. He and his wife, Yocheved Rivka, are the proud parents of eight children and four grandchildren. Seth Tan Seth was most recently the head of Infrastructure Asia, a regional infrastructure facilitation office under the Singapore government. Initiatives he led include bringing top private sector companies to co-create bankable Asian infrastructure. Seth has worked in the infrastructure sector for 25 years, spanning a broad spectrum of infrastructure and a large geographical area (even economies further away from Asia like Zambia, Nigeria, and Ghana). Thanks to esteemed employers like BNP Paribas, Babcock and Brown, Standard Bank, and DBS Bank, Seth worked outside Singapore for 15 years and traveled to almost 80 cities across the globe. His favorite cities are Beijing (where he lived for nine years) and Singapore (home). He now lives in Singapore with his wife, Li Xiang, and their children, Zoey and Evan.

The great monopoly in this country is money. So long as that exists, our old variety and individual energy of development are out of the question. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit.

Taking financial risks is an essential part of what banks do, but there’s no clear sense of what constitutes responsible risk. Taking legal risks seems to have become part of what banks do as well. Since the financial crisis, Congress has passed copious amounts of legislation aimed at curbing banks’ risky behavior. Lawsuits against large banks have cost them billions. Yet bad behavior continues to plague the industry. Why isn’t there more change? In Better Bankers, Better Banks, Claire A. Hill and Richard W. Painter look back at the history of banking and show how the current culture of bad behavior—dramatized by the corrupt, cocaine-snorting bankers of The Wolf of Wall Street—came to be. In the early 1980s, banks went from partnerships whose partners had personal liability to corporations whose managers had no such liability and could take risks with other people’s money. A major reason bankers remain resistant to change, Hill and Painter argue, is that while banks have been faced with large fines, penalties, and legal fees—which have exceeded one hundred billion dollars since the onset of the crisis—the banks (which really means the banks’shareholders) have paid them, not the bankers themselves. The problem also extends well beyond the pursuit of profit to the issue of how success is defined within the banking industry, where highly paid bankers clamor for status and clients may regard as inevitable bankers who prioritize their own self-interest. While many solutions have been proposed, Hill and Painter show that a successful transformation of banker behavior must begin with the bankers themselves. Bankers must be personally liable from their own assets for some portion of the bank’s losses from excessive risk-taking and illegal behavior. This would instill a culture that discourages such behavior and in turn influence the sorts of behavior society celebrates or condemns. Despite many sensible proposals seeking to reign in excessive risk-taking, the continuing trajectory of scandals suggests that we’re far from ready to avert the next crisis. Better Bankers, Better Banks is a refreshing call for bankers to return to the idea that theirs is a noble profession.

Once an obscure niche of the investment world, private equity has grown into a juggernaut, with consequences for a wide range of industries as well as the financial markets. Private equity funds control companies that represent trillions of dollars in assets, millions of employees, and the well-being of thousands of institutional investors and their beneficiaries. Even as the ruthlessness of some funds has made private equity a poster child for the harms of unfettered capitalism, many aspects of the industry remain opaque, hidden from the normal bounds of accountability. The Myth of Private Equity is a hard-hitting and meticulous exposé from an insider’s viewpoint. Jeffrey C. Hooke—a former private equity executive and investment banker with deep knowledge of the industry—examines the negative effects of private equity and the ways in which it has avoided scrutiny. He unravels the exaggerations that the industry has spun to its customers and the business media, scrutinizing its claims of lucrative investment returns and financial wizardry and showing the stark realities that are concealed by the funds’ self-mythologizing and penchant for secrecy. Hooke details the flaws in private equity’s investment strategies, critically examines its day-to-day operations, and reveals the broad spectrum of its enablers. A bracing and essential read for both the financial profession and the broader public, this book pulls back the curtain on one of the most controversial areas of finance.

The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.

“Eamon Javers has produced a remarkable book about the secret world of business warfare—a world filled with corporate spies and covert ops and skullduggery… An important book that has the added pleasure of reading like a spy novel.” —David Grann, author of The Lost City of Z Award-winning reporter Eamon Javers’s Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy is a penetrating work of investigative and historical journalism about the evolution of corporate espionage, exploring the dangerous and combustible power spies hold over international business. From the birth of the Pinkertons to Howard Hughes, from presidents to Cold War spies, Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy is, like Legacy of Ashes and Blackwater, a first rate political thriller that also just happens to be true.