A gripping story of unbridled greed and determination by one man to survive.
Roped into an illicit bond-trading syndicate, a desperate trader soon realises his life is in danger. Caught between an unscrupulous Wall Street powerhouse, suspicious regulators and the ruthless Utraco syndicate, he must get out before he is arrested or killed.
Synopsis
In this razor-sharp, high-stakes financial-crime thriller, Broker Dealer Banker Thief, naked ambition in the cut-throat world of inter-dealer brokerage spirals into elaborate fraud on a global scale. Harvey Fallon, a struggling broker in the City of London, is desperate to win a prestigious Wall Street bank as his client. Elze Fontaine, a charismatic and dangerously persuasive bond trader, is driven by money to fund her lifestyle obsessions and her addiction to spread betting. She understands more than anyone: brokers strive to be masters of the universe. They seek the kudos that comes with being a top producer, the insider opportunities, and the status success brings in the male-dominated world of bond trading. Elze offers Harvey precisely that, but at a price: he must help her to beat the system.
The Utraco Syndicate
After the financial crisis, traders no longer receive cash bonuses, as governments and regulators tried to discourage the casino-style risk-taking many believe caused it. Together, Elze and Harvey mastermind Utraco, a bond trading syndicate that exploits flaws in sovereign debt markets. Utraco consists of Harvey, a broker at a revered City of London brokerage house; Noah Shapiro, a market-maker at a major U.S. bank; and Harvey’s down-on-his-luck stepbrother, Scibby, at a boutique asset manager in Zurich, who begin targeting Wall Street. As the money pours in, the lies Scibby must tell to justify the payouts that fund the syndicate’s feverish spending and seductive excesses multiply under growing scrutiny from regulators and the financial institutions they use. Meanwhile, the head trader at one of the syndicate’s banks in Switzerland secretly tries to emulate Utraco’s success by trading the same securities and loses millions.
The Fall
Utraco’s trading continues at a terrifying pace. Convinced of their infallibility, Harvey’s confidence turns to carelessness; others now want a slice of the pie as tensions rise between Utraco’s principal members, who want a bigger share of the take. Blending dark humour, offshore finance, the capital markets, private banking, romance, and psychological tension, Broker Dealer Banker Thief is a cleverly constructed, multi-layered plot in which every conversation is an interrogation, every relationship has a hidden agenda, and loyalty becomes leverage. For the Utraco syndicate to survive, relationships are betrayed, know-how is weaponised to exploit the vulnerability inherent in the sovereign debt markets—because the most elaborate frauds are rarely constructed purely for financial gain…
Why this story matters
Broker Dealer Banker Thief isn’t just an ordinary financial-crime thriller; it’s an exposé of financial crime that could be taking place in trading rooms in the world’s major financial centres, having gone undetected to this day.