The Spider Network: The Wild Story of a Math Genius, a Gang of Backstabbing Bankers, and One of the Greatest Scams in Financial History

NV said Awesome page turner. I had read every WSJ article on "Unraveling of Tom Hayes" and hoped that someday the author would write a book on the subject. Well, he has, and he has done it with exceptional honesty and integrity. It is scary to read about the fragile governance of Libor by the British government and even more reckless tempering of the lynchpin parameter of world finance by major banks. How a genius but emotionally unbalanced trader paid for the collective guilt and lack of government accountability comes alive through every page. My heart reaches out to his family. Don't the most innocent pay the biggest price?. Amazon Customer said Fantastic storytelling and a great read. Fantastic storytelling and a great read! The author avoids too much focus on market jargon and technical details and paints a terrific picture of the people involved from junior traders to CFTC investigators. It almost reads like a novel even though everything is exhaustively researched and based on a strong relationship with many sources including the protagonist himself, Tom Hayes.. P M Langham said Brilliantly written book about the downfall of Tom Hayes and the story behind how it happened. This is an excellent and well researched book which I would highly recommend to anyone who is interested in Financial Markets or in better understanding the LIBOR scandal. The book reads partly as a documentary of what actually happened and how Tom Hayes ended up being charged and found guilty of being the mastermind behind the scandal and it also reads in some ways as a racy novel, it is compulsive reading. The story is ultimately very sad because Tom Hayes, due to his aspergers' found himself surrounded by people and an environment he probably didn't really understand. He thought people that were ready to use, manipulate

In 2006, an oddball group of bankers, traders and brokers from some of the world's largest financial institutions made a startling realization: Libor - the London interbank offered rate, which determines the interest rates on trillions in loans worldwide - was set daily by a small group of easily manipulated functionaries, and that they could reap huge profits by nudging it to suit their trading portfolios. Eventually known as the "Spider Network", Hayes's circle generated untold riches - until it all unraveled in spectacularly vicious, backstabbing fashion. Tom Hayes, a brilliant but troubled mathematician, became the lynchpin of a wild alliance that among others included a French trader nicknamed "Gollum"; the broker "Abbo", who liked to publicly strip naked when drinking; a Kazakh chicken farmer turned something short of financial whiz kid; a broker known as "Village" (short for "Village Idiot") and fascinated with human-animal sex