High Financier: The Lives and Times of Siegmund Warburg - Hardcover

Ferguson, Niall

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 159420246X ISBN 13: 9781594202469

Publisher: Penguin Pr, 2010

Synopsis

Bestselling author Niall Ferguson reveals for the first time the true extent of Siegmund Warburg's influence-and the lessons we can learn in a time of crisis from the last of the high financiers.

"Success from the financial and from the prestige point of view . . . is not enough; what matters even more is . . . adherence to high moral and aesthetic standards."
-Siegmund Warburg, 1959

In this pathbreaking new biography, based on more than ten thousand hitherto unavailable letters and diary entries, bestselling author Niall Ferguson returns to his roots as a financial historian to tell the story of Siegmund Warburg, an extraordinary man whose austere philosophy of finance offers much insight today.

A refugee from Hitler's Germany, Warburg rose to become the dominant figure in postwar City of London and one of the architects of European financial integration. Seared by the nearcollapse and then "Aryanization" of his family's long-established bank in the 1930s and then frustrated by the stagnation of its Wall Street sister, Kuhn Loeb, in the 1950s, Warburg resolved that his own firm of S. G. Warburg (founded in 1946) would be different.

An obsessive perfectionist with an aversion to excessive risk, Warburg came to embody the ideals of the haute banquet-high finance- always eschewing the fast buck in favor of gilt-edged advice. He was not only the master of the modern merger and founder of the eurobond; he was also a key behind-the-scenes adviser to governments in London, Tokyo, and Jerusalem-to his critics, a "financial Rasputin." Like a character from a Thomas Mann novel, Warburg was a complex and ambivalent man, as much a psychologist, politician, and actor-manager as he was a banker. In High Financier Niall Ferguson shares the first book-length examination of a man whose life and work suggest an alternative to the troubled business principles that helped shape our current financial landscape.

About this title

Product Description:

High Financier In this pathbreaking new biography, based on more than 10,000 hitherto unavailable letters and diary entries, bestselling author Ferguson returns to his roots as a financial historian to tell the story of legendary financier Siegmund Warburg.

Review:

Beautifully paced, dramatically subtle and psychologically shrewd, this is Ferguson at his finest (Peter Stormonth Darling Spectator)

Ferguson is a talented writer, capable of grace and insight, but it is his ability as a historian that shows most strongly in High Financier (T. J. Stiles The Washington Post Sunday)

Its many finance lessons aside, High Financier is a pleasure to read simply as a work of literary skill. It is not only prodigiously researched but also splendidly written-clear and vivid and precise, perhaps even of enough merit to satisfy a word-stickler like Siegmund Warburg (Wall Street Journal)

A timely, original and engaging biography of Siegmund Warburg (Sathnam Sanghera The Times)

This book is both a notable contribution to economic history and a fascinating portrait (Geoffrey Owen Telegraph)

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Pr
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 159420246X
• ISBN 13: 9781594202469
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 548