Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World - Softcover

Hope, Bradley; Wright, Tom

Softcover

ISBN 10: 031643647X ISBN 13: 9780316436472

Publisher: Hachette Books, 2019

Synopsis

Named a Best Book of 2018 by the Financial Times and Fortune, this "thrilling" (Bill Gates) New York Times bestseller exposes how a "modern Gatsby" swindled over $5 billion with the aid of Goldman Sachs in "the heist of the century" (Axios).
Now a #1 international bestseller, BILLION DOLLAR WHALE is "an epic tale of white-collar crime on a global scale" (Publishers Weekly, starred review), revealing how a young social climber from Malaysia pulled off one of the biggest heists in history.

In 2009, a chubby, mild-mannered graduate of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business named Jho Low set in motion a fraud of unprecedented gall and magnitude--one that would come to symbolize the next great threat to the global financial system. Over a decade, Low, with the aid of Goldman Sachs and others, siphoned billions of dollars from an investment fund--right under the nose of global financial industry watchdogs. Low used the money to finance elections, purchase luxury real estate, throw champagne-drenched parties, and even to finance Hollywood films like The Wolf of Wall Street.

By early 2019, with his yacht and private jet reportedly seized by authorities and facing criminal charges in Malaysia and in the United States, Low had become an international fugitive, even as the U.S. Department of Justice continued its investigation.
BILLION DOLLAR WHALE has joined the ranks of Liar's Poker, Den of Thieves, and Bad Blood as a classic harrowing parable of hubris and greed in the financial world.

About this title

About the Author:

Tom Wright was one of the first journalists to arrive at the scene of the raid in which Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden. In 2013, he spearheaded coverage of the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh, which killed over 1,000 people, earning the Wall Street Journal a Sigma Delta Chi award from The Society of Professional Journalists. He is a Pulitzer finalist, a Loeb winner, and has garnered numerous awards from the Society of Publishers in Asia, which in 2016 named him "Journalist of the Year." He speaks English, Malay, French and Italian.

Bradley Hope has worked for the Wall Street Journal for the last four years, covering finance and malfeasance from New York City and London. Before that, he spent six years as a correspondent in the Middle East, where he covered the Arab Spring uprisings from Cairo, Tripoli, Tunis, and Beirut. He was detained by authorities in Bahrain, reported from the front lines of the Libyan civil war, and has been teargassed in raucous Egyptian protests. Bradley is a Pulitzer finalist and a Loeb winner, and also author of Last Days of the Pharaoh, a chronicle of the final days and hours of the presidency of Hosni Mubarak.

Review:

A Financial Times Best Book of 2018

A Fortune magazine Best Book of 2018

"As Bad Blood is to biotech, Billion Dollar Whale is to international finance... a wonderful read... Thrilling."―Bill Gates

"What a blast to read! A true life thriller that reads like a Hollywood movie, Billion Dollar Whale traces the exploits of the most mercurial, mysterious big player in history. Jho Low is Gatsby with twice the bank account and ten times the ambition, and the stories surrounding his exploits leap right off the page!"―Ben Mezrich, New York Times bestselling author of The Accidental Billionaires and Bringing Down The House

"If you like global intrigue, financial crime, wealth porn, and absurdity, Billion Dollar Whale, by Tom Wright and Bradley Hope, is for you.... It almost seems made up. Still, anyone who has followed the news out of Malaysia will know that the story is all too real."―The New Yorker

"Wright and Hope deliver a scintillating and prodigiously reported tale of a globe-spanning modern Gatsby and his audacious fraud."―Jesse Eisinger, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for ProPublica and author of The Chickenshit Club

"This story of a Wharton graduate who carried out the $5 billion swindle known as 1MDB offers a textbook case of financial fraud in the modern age."―New York Times


"An incredible story.... If you need some billionaires to despise--look no further than these charlatans."―Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit

"Just finished reading Billion Dollar Whale and was blown away. I thought I had seen it all with Russian kleptocracy, but the story of the money stolen in Malaysia in 1MDB and all the enthusiastic Western enablers was unbelievable."
―Bill Browder, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Red Notice

"Even the most skilled fiction writer would have trouble conjuring the corrupt and colorful protagonist of Billion Dollar Whale. Bradley Hope and Tom Wright's gripping portrait of Jho Low and his enablers throughout the global financial system will both fascinate and enrage you."―Sheelah Kolhatkar, staff writer at The New Yorker and New York Times bestselling author of Black Edge

About this edition

• Publisher: Hachette Books
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 031643647X
• ISBN 13: 9780316436472
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416