num_pages: 528
description: In 2006 an oddball group of bankers traders and brokers from some of the largest financial institutions made a startling realization: Liborthe London interbank offered rate which determines the interest rates on trillions in loans worldwidewas set daily by a small group of easily manipulated administrators and that they could reap huge profits by nudging it fractions of a percent to suit their trading portfolios. Tom Hayes a brilliant but troubled mathematician became the lynchpin of a wild alliance that included a prickly French trader nicknamed Gollum; the broker Abbo who liked to publicly strip naked when drinking; a nervous Kazakh chicken farmer known as Derka Derka; a broker known as Village (short for Village Idiot) who racked up huge expense account bills; an executive called Clumpy because of his patchwork hair loss; and a broker uncreatively nicknamed Big Nose who had once been a semi-professional boxer. This group generated incredible riches until it all unraveled in spectacularly vicious backstabbing fashion.With exclusive access to key characters and evidence The Spider Network is not only a rollicking account of the scam but also a provocative examination of a financial system that was crooked throughout.
language: English
title: The Spider Network: The Wild Story of a Math Genius, a Gang of Backstabbing Bankers, and One of the Greatest Scams in Financial History
publisher: Custom House/Harper Collins