High Financier: The Lives and Time of Siegmund Warburg

Product Description In this groundbreaking new biography, based on more than ten thousand hitherto unavailable letters and diary entries, bestselling author Niall Ferguson returns to his roots as a financial historian to tell the story of Siegmund Warburg, an extraordinary man whose austere philosophy of finance offers much insight today. A refugee from Hitler's Germany, Warburg rose to become the dominant figure in postwar City of London and one of the architects of European financial integration. Seared by the near collapse and then "Aryanization" of his family's long-established bank in the 1930s and then frustrated by the stagnation of its Wall Street sister, Kuhn Loeb, in the 1950s, Warburg resolved that his own firm of S. G. Warburg (founded in 1946) would be different. An obsessive perfectionist with an aversion to excessive risk, Warburg came to embody the ideals of the haute banque-high finance-always eschewing the fast buck in favor of gilt-edged advice. He was not only the master of the modern merger and founder of the eurobond; he was also a key behind-the-scenes adviser to governments in London, Tokyo, and Jerusalem-to his critics, a "financial Rasputin." Like a character from a Thomas Mann novel, Warburg was a complex and ambivalent man, as much a psychologist, politician, and actor-manager as he was a banker. In High Financier, Ferguson shares the first book-length examination of a man whose life and work suggest an alternative to the troubled business principles that helped shape our current financial landscape. Review "Ferguson brings great authority to this account.... [He] is a talented writer, capable of grace and insight, but it is his ability as a historian that shows most strongly in High Financier. ---Washington Post About the Author Niall Ferguson is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and the bestselling author of Paper and Iron and The House of Rothschild.James Langton trained as an actor at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. An AudioFile Earphones Award winner, he has performed many voice-overs and narrated numerous audiobooks. James was born in York, England, and is now based in New York City. From AudioFile This lengthy biography of international financier Siegmund Warburg offers a unique view of history from 1930 to 1980 as seen through the filter of banking and finance. Biographer Ferguson focuses mainly on Warburg's development as a financier, his rise to prominence and worldwide influence, and his aspirations to join England, the U.S., and Western Europe in a mutually beneficial economic partnership. James Langton employs a clear, clipped voice for much of the narration, which provides the crisp pacing the text lacks. His attempts at accents for quoted passages from Warburg and others, however, sound awkward and artificial. Still, this is a well-written, broadly sourced look at a brilliant financier. M.O.B. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine