After the financial crisis, a group of traders collude to circumvent the malus clauses in their contracts, designed to prevent the casino-style risk-taking at investment banks that governments and regulators believe caused it. Together, they form an illicit syndicate masterminded by Elze Fontaine, a successful bond trader and inveterate gambler. She grooms an underperforming broker, Harvey, to help her achieve her objectives. Her plan succeeds, but she wants more, having recently been declared bankrupt after a series of huge bets at a string of spread-betting firms went disastrously wrong. Elze masterminds Utraco, a sovereign bond-trading syndicate involving Harvey, at the world’s largest inter-dealer brokerage in London, and his adopted brother, Scibby, a once big-time trader who has fallen on lean times. Scibby reluctantly agrees to front the syndicate in Zurich with Noah Shapiro, a raging psychopath and market-maker for a Wall Street investment bank. Behind the scenes, Scibby’s private life is in turmoil. Those closest to him demand more and more money to fund their lifestyle obsessions: his ex-wife, Sophie, and Caspara, his materialistic, young and attractive second wife, whom he married to save her from deportation to Iran.
The syndicate generates massive returns, but not fast enough to keep up with the members’ feverish spending. Mirin Bank & Trust in Switzerland settles the syndicate’s trades, unaware of its existence due to a series of offshore entities and nominee directors. But Hubertus Hecht, the new head trader, discovers one client’s stellar success and tries to emulate it, but loses millions, washing the losses through the bank’s private banking subsidiary. Hecht tips off Mirin Bank’s Compliance Department to analyse the trades on a/c 808296, without mentioning that he is secretly trading the same securities on the bank’s behalf. Harvey needs increasingly large sums of money to fund the renovation and extension to his London home. Noah needs money to complete an enormous seaside development in Israel. With the syndicate at serious risk of discovery, Scibby is pressurised to take greater and greater risks, despite everything he is doing to disguise the syndicate’s illicit trades. Harvey, Elze, and Noah demand a much bigger share of the take and go behind his back to cut him out. Scibby sees the writing on the wall, gambles with the syndicate’s money, and loses everything.
Unable to repay the money or go to the authorities for fear of tipping off the syndicate, he is forced on the run, in fear for his life. After learning of Scibby’s perilous situation, his devoted mother, a nurse at a renowned cancer research hospital in London, reminds him of a speculative cryptocurrency investment he made several years earlier. With the meteoric rise in cryptocurrency values and the help of a veteran currency trader, she grows the Bitcoin holding to several million dollars. Empowered by the unexpected windfall, Scibby goes on the offensive.
Whilst hosting a lavish reception at their spectacular London home, Harvey is arrested. Noah, dining at a prestigious Knightsbridge restaurant, is also taken into custody after a violent and bloody struggle with police. Sophie is revealed as a serial liar who planned to divorce Scibby all along, even before they were married, but only once the children arrived, so she could lay claim to the imposing family home in the foothills of Lake Geneva. As a result of a traffic ‘incident’ in Dubai, Caspara is found to be living there illegally and is deported to Iran. Hecht is fired from the investment bank, and the private clients are reimbursed. With Harvey and Noah barred from the global capital markets, Elze re-establishes Syndicate 2.0 with an all-new line-up.