FREUD IN THE CITY: 20 TURBULENT YEARS AT THE SHARP END OF THE GLOBAL FINANCE REVOLUTION

by David Freud

Overview

The ebook edition of David Freud’s universally acclaimed 2006 autobiographical account of his accidental career in the City and how, after a bruising 20 years, he emerged as one of the most successful investment bankers of his generation.

This is the inside story of some of the most interesting and controversial mega-deals of the period.

David Freud stayed at the sharp end of the business through his 20-year stint – conducting transactions in no fewer than 19 countries. Written with pace, humour and insight David Freud's now classic account of his work and life reveals the tensions, the rivalries, the cock-ups, and the break-neck pace of life in the City during this period.

Here is the reality of life in the City and it is far from the anonymous shuffling of money between faceless institutions. David’s career proved to be a battle-ground of individualism, dominated by powerful characters accustomed to taking tough decisions in a pressurised, gossip-fuelled environment.  And as the global revolution advanced, a sense of desperation ignited extreme levels of competition, with too many financial institutions jockeying for position in a diminishing marketplace.

David Freud was at the centre of it all. He played a pivotal role

• In the flotation of Eurotunnel, (“I later discovered I had sold the market a pup”) against the backdrop of Black Monday. 

• His Warburg Euro Disney team launched the first truly pan-European flotation, raising £600m – only to be faced with potential disaster when the price went into tail-spin. 

• The highs and lows of financing the Channel Tunnel Railway Link and admitting to Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, that they’d got their sums massively – by £1.2bn – wrong. 

He was part of the Warburg Group’s break-neck expansion which ended in humiliation and collapse. Then he played a key role in its renaissance as UBS when its new Swiss owners rebuilt the bank’s position - for a time at least - in the financial markets of London and around the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781910533390
Publisher:	Nine Elms Books Ltd
Publication date:	07/14/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	105
File size:	746 KB

About the Author

David Freud, the great grandson of Sigmund Freud, was born in London and educated at the Whitgift School in Croydon and then read PPE at Merton College, Oxford. He went into journalism, first as a graduate trainee with Thomson on the Western Mail in Cardiff, before moving to the Financial Times. For his last four years at the FT, he wrote the Lex Column. In 1984, David Freud joined stockbrokers Rowe&Pitman, after a morning's introduction to the different parts of the firm, he returned to find a British Airways file on his previously empty desk. He never managed to clear his desk again and retired twenty years later as vice chairman of UBS Investment Banking...leaving a rather messy legacy in his wastepaper basket! But what do bankers do after a successful career? Many rest on their laurels and live comfortably off the fruits of their endeavours. Not so David Freud. He has reinvented himself with two new parallel but very unusual careers. Firstly he was chief executive of the Portland Trust committed to promoting peace and stability between Palestinians and Israelis through economic development. Secondly, in 2006 he was commissioned by Prime Minister Tony Blair to take a completely fresh look at the country's 'Welfare to Work' programme. His original thinking in his subsequent report has been accepted as the way forward by all the parties across the political divide. He was appointed to the House of Lords by David Cameron as the Minister of State for Welfare Reform to implement the Government's welfare policies. His work in this sector has gained international recognition and acclaim. He stood down from his government role in December 2016.

Table of Contents

Introduction:   So You’re the Banker

Chapter 1:        An Accidental Career in the City

Chapter 2:        Equity is Funny Stuff

Chapter 3:        Privatising the UK

Chapter 4:         Big Bang

Chapter 5:        Tunnel Vision

Chapter 6:        EuroDisney

Chapter 7:        World War III in the International Equity Markets

Chapter 8:        Collapse of Warburg

Chapter 9:       Swiss Roll In 

Chapter 10:     Rail Britannia

Chapter 11:     High Noon for Sectors

Chapter 12:     Germany and the Dotcom Boom

Chapter 13:     Swansong

Appendices

A: Timetable of significant events

B: List of transactions

C: Glossary of terms