The Devil’s Derivatives: The Untold Story of the Slick Traders and Hapless Regulators Who Almost Blew Up Wall Street… and Are Ready to Do It Again. 30% discount offer for registered readers.

The Devil’s Derivatives reveals the untold inside story of modern financial innovation – how investment banks invented new financial products, how investors across the world were wooed into buying them, how regulators were seduced by the political rewards of easy credit, and how speculators made a killing from the near-meltdown of the financial system.

Nicholas Dunbar demystifies and popularizes this complex world by explaining the revolution that briefly gave finance the same intellectual respectability as theoretical physics. He explains how by juggling risks and rewards like atoms and molecules, bankers created a secret trillion-dollar machine that delivered cheap mortgages to the masses and riches beyond dreams to the financial innovators.

Fundamental to his story is how “the people who hated to lose” were persuaded to accept risk by “the people who loved to win.” Why did people come to accept that the use of arcane financial tools was safe and positive for society? Who were the bankers competing to assemble the basic components into increasingly intricate machines? How did this process achieve its own unstoppable momentum—ending in collapse, bailouts, and a public outcry against the rock stars of finance?

Provocative and intriguing, this new book sheds much-needed light on the forces that fueled the most brutal economic downturn since the Great Depression.

"I recommend this as an independent insight into the events of 2008 and the failure of Lehman. It’s a lesson to us all about the fragility of the capital markets."

– Bill Hodgson, The OTC Space

"Nicholas Dunbar follows the first rule of good journalism: talk to everybody. He has interviewed not only the leading players in the derivatives industry, but has also followed many key actors whose stories have never appeared in print – until now. As this book makes clear, the dark side of financial innovation is just getting darker, and it is only a matter of time until we suffer another derivatives fiasco."

-Frank Partnoy, Professor, University of San Diego School of Law

Harvard Business Review Press are offering The OTC Space readers a 30% discount off the RRP (£17.99) of The Devil's Derivatives. To make use of this offer, email specials@gbs.tbs-ltd.co.uk quoting reference NDOTCS30.