Finance Biography

How does a person organize a good life? The ancient Greeks divided time into five types: labour, work, leisure, play and aergia (contemplation). But labour was separated from work, as painful, onerous work undertaken for survival, whereas work could include caring for family members, study, or political activities. But now our jobs are supposed to provide all meaning in life and our time outside of work is thought of as simply 'time off'.

Richard H. Lawrence, Jr. founded Overlook Investments in Hong Kong in 1991. Since inception, Overlook has grown at 14.3% per year for three decades a remarkable record of growth that is testament to a consistent ability to find and invest in Asia's best companies. This raises two important questions: How did Overlook achieve its success; and how can Overlook best ensure future success? Now, in a level of detail never before disclosed, Richard and the Overlook executive team turn the lens inward to analyze The Overlook Model.

In December 2008, the world watched as master financier Bernard L. Madoff was taken away from his posh Manhattan apartment in handcuffs, accused of swindling thousands of innocent victims - including friends and family - out of billions of dollars in the world's largest Ponzi scheme. Madoff went to jail; he will spend the rest of his life there. But what happened to his devoted wife and sons?

Written and read by the man whose resumé boasts "Inventor of the World Wide Web," Weaving the Web is the not-to-be-missed story of how the Internet came to be and where its creator thinks it's going.

The trailblazing story of Janet Yellen, the Ruth Bader Ginsburg of economics, and her lifelong advocacy for an economics of empathy that delivers the fruits of a prosperous society to people at the bottom half of the economic ladder.

When Michael Woodford was made president of Olympus - the company to which he had dedicated thirty years of his career - he became the first Westerner ever to climb the ranks of one of Japan’s corporate giants. Some wondered at the appointment - how could a gaijin who didn’t even speak Japanese understand how to run a Japanese company? But within months Woodford had gained the confidence of most of his colleagues and shareholders.

North Korea is one of the most troubled societies on earth. The country's 24 million people live under a violent dictatorship led by a single family, which relentlessly pursues the development of nuclear arms, which periodically incites risky military clashes with the larger, richer, liberal South, and which forces each and every person to play a role in the "theater state" even as it pays little more than lip service to the wellbeing of the overwhelming majority.

In 2008, when the Bitcoin Whitepaper was published online, the technology world changed forever. Hero / Villain: Satoshi: The Man Who Built Bitcoin tells the story of how an awkward Australian security specialist first created something revolutionary under the moniker “Satoshi Nakamoto” and how he spent every moment thereafter either in self-imposed hiding or in court trying to protect his invention.

Beating the Odds is the improbable, inspiring autobiography of financial guru Eddie C. Brown, one of the nation's top stock pickers and money managers. It details how Brown skillfully kept Brown Capital Management afloat through the dot-com bust, 9/11, and the Great Recession. Born to a 13-year-old unwed mother in the rural South, this African-American investment whiz created a Baltimore-based financial firm that amassed more than $6 billion under management.

Ackroyd portrays London from the time of the druids to the beginning of the twenty-first century, noting magnificence in both epochs, but this is not a simple chronological record. It is a comprehensive account, animated by Ackroyd's concern for the close relationship between the present and the past as well as by what he describes as the peculiar "echoic" quality of London whereby its texture and history actively affect the lives and personalities of its citizens.

Obroni and the Chocolate Factory is Steven's chaotic, fascinating, and bemusing journey to create a successful international business that aspired do a bit of good in the world. This book is at once a penetrating business memoir and a story about imagining globalism done right. Wallace's picaresque journey takes him to Ghana's residence for the head of state, to the Amsterdam offices of a secretive international cocoa conglomerate, and face-to-face with key figures in the sharp-elbowed world of global trade and geopolitics.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador ofrece, como ningún otro presidente de México lo había hecho antes, un diálogo íntimo y elocuente sobre los puntuales resultados de su primer año de gobierno. Este audiolibro permite entender con claridad la propuesta del presidente Andrés Manuel López Obrador de una economía nacional basada en la prosperidad general de la población y la restructuración de los organismos, las instituciones y, sobre todo, las prácticas políticas y sociales para servir al bien común y propiciar un verdadero Estado de bienestar.

Amazon’s business model is deceptively simple: make online shopping so easy and convenient that customers won’t think twice. It can almost be summed up by the button on every page: Buy now with one click. Why has Amazon been so successful? Much of it has to do with Jeff Bezos, the CEO and founder, whose business strategy and unique combination of character traits have driven Amazon to the top of the online retail world. Originally a computer nerd rather than a businessman, he had the vision to capitalize on the untapped online marketplace for bookselling....

With a plan for reducing US oil dependency. It’s never too late to top your personal best. Now eighty years old, T. Boone Pickens is a legendary figure in the business world. Known as the “Oracle of Oil” because of his uncanny ability to predict the direction of fuel prices, he built Mesa Petroleum, one of the largest independent oil companies in the United States, from a $2,500 investment. In the 1980s, Pickens became a household name when he executed a series of unsolicited buyout bids for undervalued oil companies.

Exploring key episodes in that nation's long political, military, and cultural history, Clissold outlines five Chinese Rules, which anyone can deploy in on-the-ground situations with modern Chinese counterparts. These Chinese rules will enable foreigners not only to cooperate with China but also to compete with it on its own terms.

"This book is in part a detective story. After 9/11 I knew, if I needed further reinforcement, that we are living in a new world - the world of a global capitalist economy that is vastly more flexible, resilient, open, self-correcting, and fast-changing than it was even a quarter century earlier. It's a world that presents us with enormous new possibilities but also enormous new challenges. The Age of Turbulence is my attempt to understand the nature of this new world." (Alan Greenspan)

America has been through the biggest financial crisis since the great Depression, unemployment numbers are frightening, median wages have been flat since the 1970s, and it is common to expect that things will get worse before they get better. Certainly, the multidecade stagnation is not yet over. How will we get out of this mess?

Warren Buffett has repeatedly acknowledged Benjamin Graham, a man he personally studied and worked under, as the primary influence on his investment approach. Indeed, there is a direct line between the record-shattering investing performance of Buffett (and other value investors) and Graham's life. In six books and dozens of papers, Graham—widely known as the "Dean of Wall Street"—left an extensive account of an investing system that, as Buffett can attest to, actually works!

Jake Halpern introduces us to a former banking executive and a former armed robber who become partners and go in quest of "paper" - the uncollected debts that are sold off by banks for pennies on the dollar. As Halpern shows, the world of consumer debt collection is a wild and unregulated shadow land, where operators may misrepresent a debtor's situation, make illegal threats, and even lay claim to debts that are not theirs to collect in the first place.

On the death of France's most glorious king, Louis XIV, in 1715, few people benefited from the shift in power more than the intriguing financial genius from Edinburgh, John Law. Law had proposed to the English monarch that a bank be established to issue paper money with the credit based on the value of land. But Queen Anne was not about to take advice from a gambler and felon. So, in exile in Paris, he convinced the bankrupt court of Louis XV of the value of his idea.