Books
In Association With
Gucci Wars: How I Survived Murder and Intrigue at the Heart of the World’s Biggest Fashion House
You’ll be expecting Tom Ford, of course. But there isn’t a word about him here. How could you publish a book about the Guccis in 2008 without a single mention of Tom Ford?
It’s Not All About Money: Memoirs of a Private Banker
‘The little gnomes of Zurich’ was a phrase famously used by prime minister Harold Wilson in 1964 to describe Swiss bankers whom he suspected of speculating against the pound. Hans Julius Baer, author of this expansive autobiography, is in the nicest possible way rather a big gnome of Zurich.
Wealth, War and Wisdom
Reading this book while the world gets to grips with the global credit crisis gives it an added piquancy. ‘History suggests that the rich almost always are too complacent,’ Biggs writes, ‘because they cherish the illusion that when things start to go bad, they will have time to extricate themselves and their wealth. It never works that way.’
Extreme Value Hedging: How Activist Hedge Fund Managers are Taking on the World
As a group, activist managers are the direct, linear descendents of the corporate raiders of the 1980s — and many of them actually worked for financial predators such as T Boone Pickens, famous for his dawn raids on US energy companies.
The Eccentric Billionaire: John D MacArthur – Empire Builder, Reluctant Philanthropist, Relentless Adversary
By the mid-1960s he was one of five living billionaires, the others being HL Hunt, Howard Hughes, John Paul Getty, and Daniel K Ludwig. When he died in 1978 he was reckoned to be the second richest man in America after Ludwig (a shipping magnate).
The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash
Is there anyone with just the vaguest interest in finance who doesn’t know their CDOs from their CLOs? Or, say, the difference between a sub-prime mortgage and a leveraged loan?
Commodore: The Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt
Last year, when the New York Times published its lists of the Wealthiest Americans Ever, Cornelius Vanderbilt came in second. His fortune was given as $143 billion in today’s terms.
Cold Steel: Britain’s Richest Man and the Multi-Billion-Dollar Battle for a Global Empire
Indian-born steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal may be Britain’s richest man, but few have any understanding of the vision and strategy on which he has built his vast fortune.
Them and Us: The American Invasion of British High Society
America rules British lives. Far more than the Euro-conspiracy. They’ve dominated the Anglosphere, they took us to war in Iraq. And every incoming British Prime Minister gets lesson on what America will require of him.
The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty
In 1965, when Mondavi set up his winery in Napa, Americans generally drank their wines sweet and from a jug. The post-prohibition wine industry turned out rot-gut wines in gallon flagons, much of it aimed at the ‘wino’ market.
Books
Boomerang: The Meltdown Tour
Michael Lewis
Kyle Bass, a Texas-based hedge-fund manager who did well out of shorting the sub-prime property market before the 2008 financial crisis, used to play the international strategy board game Risk as a kid, which led him to find out everything about a tiny country called Iceland, which was a key strategic location in the game
The Gentry: Stories of the English
Adam Nicolson
How delicious the notion of the gentry is. How beautifully it shades into every kind of 19th-century fraudulence, into Eric Hobsbawm’s Invention of Tradition. How easily it locks on to the much later and altogether more middle-class idea of the gentleman
Zahawi and Hancock on 'Masters of Nothing'
Anne McElvoy
The Wide Blue Yonder
A new breed of Tory MPs emerged from the 2010 general election, and already some are making their mark. Anne McElvoy looks at two of Cameron’s cabal
HNW Events
Spear's/Speechly Bircham Seminar: How to be a philanthropist in the 21st century
21 February 2012
Spear's Young Turk Awards 2012
01 April 2012
Spear's Design for Living Awards 2012
01 May 2012
Spear's Wealth Insight Forum 2012
19 September 2012
The Diary
Mark Hix
04 Jan 2012
Amanda Palmer
22 Nov 2011
Patrick Perrin
11 Oct 2011
Nicky Haslam
05 Aug 2011
Stephen Webster
06 Jul 2011