Bankers: from Pillars to Pariahs
Author: Ian Peacock
Publisher: Novum Pro
Pp: 132
ISBN:978399064269-6
I asked for a review copy because I enjoy reading a good financial history, having spent my entire professional life around international financial services in one way or another, and because I had read a positive review in either The Times or The Sunday Times a weekend or so earlier.
Author Peacock starts his story in the 1950s, which feels sepia-tinted and dripping in nostalgia. He is good on capturing tone and feeling, and sprinkles the text with an occasional illustrative anecdote.
The modern crises that have come to characterise the banking industry start in 1973 with the old order beginning to disintegrate. Few readers will likely remember the secondary banking crisis of that year from hands-on experience, though I recall it from my days studying for my banking exams as part of my career trajectory at Midland Bank International Division (1979-84). That latter date is significant as it was in October that year that I joined the Financial Times Group. In my first week in my new career, possibly even on my first day, Johnson Matthey went bust and it seems to have been crisis after crisis, cock-up after cock-up, ever since.
Peacock takes us through the Big Bang of October 1986 and the Leeson-propelled Barings collapse of 1995 (I personally recall I was doing a work-out in the gym of the old Trusthouse Forte hotel in central Milton Keynes when it came on the news).
This is book does what it says on the tin, in a very readable manner which even a non-financial person should be able to access and enjoy. There is jargon, of course, but it is mostly explained in relatively simple terms, and not overused.
One quibble is the sloppy editing. I am afraid that for this pedant spelling mistakes, grammatical mistakes and the use of a comma where a full stop should is annoying. If there is to be a second edition, I would strongly advise the publisher have it proofed more robustly. But a good read nonetheless.
