With the release of hundreds of damaging documents, a dark side of Switzerland's democracy has been unveiled. Switzerland is now seen as a nation of greedy bankers, collaborators with the Nazis, and robbers of the wealth of the victims of the Holocaust. "Swiss Banks and Jewish Souls" is a powerfully enlightening account of how a small and determined group of people from divergent backgrounds humbled the legendary Swiss financial empire to achieve a measure of justice for Holocaust survivors and their heirs, while shattering the myth of Swiss wartime neutrality. Rickman tells how a small group of people, none of them professional historians, pieced together a puzzle of unknown proportions and proceeded to dismantle the myth of Swiss innocence and victimization at the hands of the Nazis, and expose a fifty-year cover-up. Untold numbers of European Jews and others placed their funds in Swiss banks because they believed they offered a safe haven for funds which the Nazis were trying to control. What better place to put their money than in Switzerland? "Swiss Banks and Jewish Souls" discusses how investigative groups proved that Switzerland stole the money of the Jews and helped the Nazis to do the same. No one began with evidence and no one had a source of knowledge upon which to fall back. All they shared was a feeling that something was terribly wrong and that a great injustice had occurred. Propelled by this instinct, a U.S. Senator, the World Jewish Congress, a British Parliamentarian, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and a handful of Holocaust survivors accomplished what the U.S., British, and French governments and a group of feuding Jewish organizations could not or would not do. As a result of this effort, how the world views Switzerland and how Switzerland views itself has been redefined. Most importantly, those who survived the Nazi horrors, only to be victimized again by the Swiss bankers, have now achieved some measure of justice, or at least financial compensation after more than fifty years.

Series Information:
Routledge International Studies in Money and Banking

At the end of the twentieth century, international business functioned in an environment dominated by the triad of economic power formed by the USA, Japan and the European Community. Multinational corporate strategies had to be formulated within the context of intense global competition between these three economic blocs. This book, first published in 1990, analyses the interplay between the trade policies adopted by the major powers and the competitive strategies of international corporations. With particular reference to trade relations between Canada and the USA, the effects of Japanese multinational dominance and the implications of European economic integration, this volume throws new light on the interaction between international business and government trade policies.

This wide-ranging volume presents in-depth research into the effect of new information technologies on organizational structure, assesses their progress towards transformation and describes the changes they are making to long-established business process roles, cultures and working practices. The book is based upon a series of rolling surveys carried out between 1989 and the present day, and funded by organizations such as IBM and KPMG. It provides a detailed picture of a sector in transition during a period of anxiety and doubt dominated by restructuring, downsizing and experimentation with re-engineering. As the "lean and mean" emerge, they must now ask themselves if their competencies will enable them to survive into the next decade as competitors, such as Sainsburys, Virgin, Microsoft and Ford position themselves to become major players in the sector. This book is a contribution to the debate on the growth of knowledge work, the need for core organizational competencies in the information age and the need for evolutionary, or radical, change.

This book, first published in 1992, explores the role of the Federal Reserve System in the Great Depression. Several theories of the causes of the Great Depression are discussed. What the Federal Reserve did, how they defended their actions, and how business writers, businessmen and economists viewed these actions are important. Analysis of these opinions sheds light on how aware of the appropriateness of Federal Reserve policy concerned participants of that time period were.

In this book, first published in 1890, the author endeavours to determine whether protectionism or free trade better accords with the interests of labour - particularly with regards to the raising of wages. He analyses the popularity of protection in the face of the evidence of its fallacies, and examines the principle of free trade and its consequences.

Developing countries have for many decades waged a campaign for the global regulation of trade in primary products through international commodity agreements. Heavily dependent upon exports of primary products, developing countries hope to regulate the markets for their commodities to achieve higher prices. While there is a myriad of obstacles to agreements, the blame for slow progress is often laid at the feet of the industrial, commodity-consuming countries, particularly the US. This book, first published in 1987, is a comparative case study that closely analyses how American businesses behaved in relation to US government responses to developing countries' demands for commodity agreements for coffee and cocoa.

The 2008 financial crisis led the whole world to ask questions of the financial industry. Why are wages in the financial industry so high? Are bonuses responsible for the financial crisis? Where do bonuses come from? Politicians and others urged people to believe that the crisis was the price of Wall Street's greed and blamed the "bonus culture" prevalent in the financial industry. However, despite widespread condemnation and the threat of tighter regulation, bonuses in the industry have proven remarkably resilient. Wages, Bonuses and Appropriation of Profit in the Financial Industry provides an in-depth inquiry into the bonus system. Drawing on examples from France, the City and Wall Street, it explains how and why workers in the financial industry can receive such large bonuses. The book examines issues around incentives, morality and wealth-sharing among employees, including the rise of "the working rich" - those who have benefited the most from the high wages and large bonuses on offer to some employees. These people have achieved wealth through their work thanks to new forms of exploitation in our ever-more dematerialised economy. This book shows how the most mobile employees holding the most mobile assets can exploit the most immobile stakeholders. In a world where inequalities are rising sharply, this book is therefore an important study of one of the key contemporary issues. It will be of vital interest to those studying finance, banking or political economy.

Financial markets have become acknowledged as a source of crisis, and discussion of them has shifted from economics, through legal and regulatory studies, to politics. Events from 2008 onwards raise important, cross-disciplinary questions: must financial markets drive states into political and existential crisis, must public finances take over private losses, must citizens endure austerity? This book argues that there is an alternative. If the financial system were less 'connected', contagion within the market would be reduced and crises would become more localised and intermittent, less global and pervasive. The question then becomes how to reduce connectedness within financial markets. This book argues that the democratic direction of financial market policies can deliver this. Politicising financial market policies - taking discussion of these issues out of the sphere of the 'technical' and putting it into the same democratically contested space as, for example, health and welfare policies - would encourage differing policies to emerge in different countries. Diversity of regulatory regimes would result in some business models being attracted to some jurisdictions, others to others. The resulting heterogeneity, when viewed from a global perspective, would be a reversal of recent and current tendencies towards one single/global 'level playing field', within which all financial firms and sectors have become closely connected and across which contagion inevitably reigns. No doubt the democratisation of financial market policy would be opposed by big firms - their interests being served by regulatory convergence - and considered macabre by some financial regulators and central bankers, who are coalescing into an elite community. However, everyone else, Nicholas Dorn argues here, would be better off in a financial world characterised by greater diversity.

In the early post-Soviet period, Ukraine appeared to be firmly on the path to democracy. But the Kuchma presidency was clouded by dark rumors of corruption and even political murder, and, by 2004, the country was in full-blown political crisis. This book looks beyond these dramatic events and aims to identify the actual play of power in Ukraine.

In the early post-Soviet period, Ukraine appeared to be firmly on the path to democracy. But the Kuchma presidency was clouded by dark rumors of corruption and even political murder, and, by 2004, the country was in full-blown political crisis. This book looks beyond these dramatic events and aims to identify the actual play of power in Ukraine.

The public relations profession positions itself as expert in building trust throughout global markets, particularly after crisis strikes. Successive crises have tainted financial markets in recent years. Calls to restore trust in finance have been particularly pressing, given trust's crucial role as lubricant in global financial engines. Nonetheless, years after the global financial crisis, trust in financial markets remains both tenuous and controversial. This book explores PR in financial markets, posing a fundamental question about PR professionals as would-be 'trust strategists'. If PR promotes its expertise in building and restoring trust, how can it ignore its potential role in losing trust in the first place? Drawing on examples from state finance, international lending agencies, trade bodies, financial institutions and consumer groups in mature and emerging financial centres, this book explores the wide-ranging role of PR in financial markets, including: State finance and debt capital markets Investor relations, M&A and IPOs Corporate communications for financial institutions Product promotion and consumer finance Financial trade associations and lobbying Consumerism and financial activism. Far reaching and challenging, this innovative book will be essential reading for researchers, advanced students and professionals in PR, communication and finance.

The emergence of an accountancy profession in Scotland is described in the context of three leading Chartered Accountants, whose careers spanned the second half of the nineteenth century and early part of the twentieth century: George Auldjo Jamieson (21828-1900), Alexander Sloan (1843-1927) and Richard Brown (1856-1918). Each biography reveals the man involved in the professionalisation events, and is described within a broader personal context associated with Victorian Scotland.

PRAISE FOR Banking on Change "In this 140th Anniversary celebration book, The London Institute of Banking and Finance stick to their core function of educating us all, but especially aspirant bankers, on the role and concerns of (retail and commercial) banking in the UK. They have assembled a well-chosen group of practitioners from a range of professions to write clear and easily assimilable essays, no technical expertise required, on a wide variety of current banking issues. If you want to learn about the current practices and problems of UK retail banking, this book must be essential reading." --Charles Goodhart, emeritus professor of banking and finance at the London School of Economics "In this important book, a line from Bill Allen's contribution is key: 'Nobody can predict the ferocity of the gale of creative destruction' that faces the financial services sector. True; but if you read the many and varied contributions, you'll have a pretty good idea. Moreover, you'll understand how we (that is, bankers) got here - and what we should do to make the industry more competitive, fairer and more genuinely useful. It is a soup-to-nuts look at banking - from the early days of the Institute of Banking, through the go-go years of ifs, to a present and future that are likely to be dominated by technology. It is well-worth a long read." --Andrew Hilton, director, Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation "If you were to imagine what a book celebrating 140 years of financial knowledge might contain, you could not come up with a better selection than this. As well as a historic sweep - from no-tech to fintech, the decline of trust and the rise of competition - today's hot subjects are addressed, including sustainable investing, cultural diversity and digital identity. The cradle-to-grave nature of the industry is captured in pieces about financial education and pensions. And it's well written, setting the scene nicely for the next era." --Jane Fuller, Fellow of the Society of Investment Professionals Financial services are undergoing rapid, and potentially dramatic, change. What will happen in payments, in sustainable finance and in fintech? How can the industry boost financial inclusion and ensure that its workforce has the skills it needs to meet regulatory requirements and to compete with new entrants? Can trade finance rise to the challenge of underpinning global trade for all and help the developing world avoid "financial abandonment"? What do financial services need to do to protect our digital identities? Banking on Change provides insights by experts and influencers from across the financial services industry on these and other questions. Published to mark the 140th anniversary of The London Institute of Banking & Finance, this book is intended to be of lasting value to both students and professionals.

This edited volume brings together finance industry perspectives from top global institutions, which focus on the bottom line for integrating ESG factors into the operations of the finance industry. Executives and senior practitioners answer the question: 'does following sustainable finance principles make commercial sense for a commercially-oriented financial institution, and if so, what evidence is there?' '

The Metaverse Economy equips fintech professionals with an in-depth understanding of the emergent economic models in the Metaverse and across Web3. In this book, fintech and metaverse experts Arun Krishnakumar and Theodora Lau help technology and financial services professionals prepare for the convergence of several technology paradigms: Web3, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), game and finance (GameFi) and the Metaverse. The Metaverse Economy provides an overview of the types of economic models that companies can use to scale business in Web3. Offering balanced insight into the complex world of the Metaverse, the book demystifies the technology and economic paradigms that have triggered the rise of the Metaverse. The book also focuses on the convergence of these economic models into a unified system that competes directly with traditional frameworks. The authors break down the new qualitative and quantitative attributes professionals must consider to capture the opportunities of the market. The Metaverse Economy tackles popular questions many financial services professionals have about market shares, value permanence, the ownership economy and play-to-earn models. Packed with case studies from some of the biggest brands in blockchain, DeFi, NFTs and gaming, the book helps finance professionals understand the risks associated with the Metaverse and prepare for what lies ahead.

This book is the first of its kind in several overlapping and rapidly developing fields that now dominate news headlines - among them the fields of crypto-currency, digital payments platforms, 'fintech,' and central bank digital currencies ('CBDCs'). With crypto and fintech now threatening to transform finance in destabilizing and anti-democratic ways, and with China and other nations now digitizing their national currencies in the form of CBDCs that make the US dollar and national payments infrastructure look ever more quaint and outmoded, this book shows both why the US and other democratic commercial societies must, and how they can, democratically digitize their currencies, their national payments systems, and the authorities that respectively issue and administer them - in the US, the Federal Reserve System ('the Fed').

The 2008 credit crisis started with the failure of one large bank: Lehman Brothers. Since then the focus of both politicians and regulators has been on stabilising the economy and preventing future financial instability. At this juncture, we are at the last stage of future-proofing the financial sector by raising capital requirements and tightening financial regulation. Now the policy agenda needs to concentrate on transforming the banking sector into an engine for growth. Reviving competition in the banking sector after the state interventions of the past years is a key step in this process. This book introduces and explains a relatively new concept in competition measurement: the performance-conduct-structure (PCS) indicator. The key idea behind this measure is that a firm's efficiency is more highly rewarded in terms of market share and profit, the stronger competitive pressure is. The book begins by explaining the financial market's fundamental obstacles to competition presenting a brief survey of the complex relationship between financial stability and competition. The theoretical contributions of Hay and Liu and Boone provide the theoretical underpinning for the PCS indicator, while its application to banking and insurance illustrates its empirical qualities. Finally, this book presents a systematic comparison between the results of this approach and (all) existing methods as applied to 46 countries, over the same sample period. This book presents a comprehensive overview of the knowns and unknowns of financial sector competition for commercial and central bankers, policy-makers, supervisors and academics alike.

Financial markets have become acknowledged as a source of crisis, and discussion of them has shifted from economics - through legal and regulatory studies - to politics. Events from 2008 onwards raise important, cross-disciplinary questions: must financial markets drive states into political and existential crisis, must public finances take over private losses, must citizens endure austerity? This book argues that there is an alternative. If the financial system were less 'connected', clearly contagion within the market would be reduced, and crises would become more localised and intermittent, less global and pervasive. The question then becomes how to reduce connectedness within financial markets. This book argues that the democratic direction of financial market policies can deliver this. Politicising financial market policies - taking discussion of these issues out of the sphere of the 'technical' and putting it into the same democratically contested space as, for example, health and welfare policies - would encourage differing policies to emerge in different countries.Diversity of regulatory regimes would result in some business models being attracted to some jurisdictions, others to others. The resulting heterogeneity, when viewed from a global perspective, would be a reversal of recent and current tendencies towards one single/global 'level playing field', within which all financial firms and sectors have become closely connected and across which contagion inevitably reigns. No doubt, the democratisation of financial market policy would be opposed by many big firms - their interests being served by regulatory convergence - and considered macabre by globetrotting financial regulators and central bankers - who are coalescing into an elite community. However, everyone else, Nicholas Dorn argues here, would be better off in a financial world characterised by greater diversity.

The emergence of an accountancy profession in Scotland is described in the context of three leading Chartered Accountants, whose careers spanned the second half of the nineteenth century and early part of the twentieth century: George Auldjo Jamieson (21828-1900), Alexander Sloan (1843-1927) and Richard Brown (1856-1918). Each biography reveals the man involved in the professionalisation events, and is described within a broader personal context associated with Victorian Scotland.

This book offers an in-depth analysis of the most salient features of contemporary financial systems and clarifies the major strategic issues facing the development of digital finance. It provides insight into how the digital finance system actually works in a socioeconomic context. It presents three key messages: that digital transformation will change the financial system entirely, that the State has a particularly important role to play in the whole process and that consumers will be offered more opportunities and freedom but simultaneously will be exposed to more risk and challenges. The book is divided into four parts. It begins by laying down the fundamentals of the subsequent analysis and offers a deep understanding of digital finance, including a topology of the key technologies applied in the transformation process. The next part reviews the challenges facing the digital State in the new reality, the digitalization of public finance and the development of digitally relevant taxation systems. In the third part, digital consumer aspects are discussed. The final part examines the risks and challenges of digital finance. The authors focus their attention on three key developments in financial markets: accelerated growth in terms of the importance of algorithms, replacing existing legal regulations; the expansion of cyber risk and its growing impact and finally the emergence of new dimensions of systemic risk as a side effect of financial digitalization. The authors supplement the analysis with a discussion of how these new risks and challenges are monitored and mitigated by financial supervision. The book is a useful, accessible guide to students and researchers of finance, finance and technology, regulations and compliance in finance.

This is the first book-length treatment of the regulation of financial technology (Fintech) in China. Fintech brings about paradigm changes to the traditional financial system, presenting both challenges and opportunities. At the international level, there has been a fierce competition for the coveted title of global Fintech hub. One of the key enablers of success in this race is regulation. As the world's leader in Fintech, China's regulatory experience is of both academic and practical significance. This book presents a systematic and contextualized account of China's Fintech regulation, and in doing so, tries to identify and analyze relevant institutional factors contributing to the development of the Chinese law. It also takes a comparative approach to critically evaluating the Chinese experience. The book illustrates why and how China's Fintech regulation has been developed, if and how it differs from the rest of the world, and what can be learned from the Chinese experience.

A how to guide to avoiding the mistakes ineffective financial advisors most often make

Based on a 15-year consulting program that author Steve Moore has led for financial advisors, "Ineffective Habits of Financial Advisors (and the Disciplines to Break Them): A Framework for Avoiding the Mistakes Everyone Else Makes" details proven techniques which allow advisors to transform their business into an elite practice: business analysis, strategic vision, exceptional client service, and acquiring high net worth clients. Told through the story of a purely fictional and completely average financial advisor, each chapter begins with an ineffective habit that is then countered with a discipline that improves business results and adds value. The book
Details a step-by-step strategy for working through current clients, rather than relying on cold calling to form new relationshipsIncludes anecdotes collected through both personal experience and stories relayed to him by clients and colleaguesProvides question and answer segments, examples, and homework assignments

"Ineffective Habits of Financial Advisors (and the Disciplines to Break Them" shows you how to deliver exceptional service while generating higher revenue per client.

This is the first book-length treatment of the regulation of financial technology (Fintech) in China. Fintech brings about paradigm changes to the traditional financial system, presenting both challenges and opportunities. At the international level, there has been a fierce competition for the coveted title of global Fintech hub. One of the key enablers of success in this race is regulation. As the world's leader in Fintech, China's regulatory experience is of both academic and practical significance. This book presents a systematic and contextualized account of China's Fintech regulation, and in doing so, tries to identify and analyze relevant institutional factors contributing to the development of the Chinese law. It also takes a comparative approach to critically evaluating the Chinese experience. The book illustrates why and how China's Fintech regulation has been developed, if and how it differs from the rest of the world, and what can be learned from the Chinese experience.

Helps understand China's latest regulation on Fintech and Big Tech companies after the suspension of Ant Group IPO in late 2020 Gives insights into China's digital currency plan and its possible implications Dicussess China's latest regulation on data privacy and market competition Offers an overview on China's strategy in developing the world's most advanced Fintech industry