Acknowledgments

This book exists because of three people. First, my editor Jeff Olson of Apress who began last September to prod me to write another book about finance for his new imprint. Jeff had nursed my last effort into print and believed that I had something more to say about the financial world that would interest and benefit the general reader. Since I am anything but a professional author and could not take any time off from my work to actually focus on a book, I was initially very skeptical. His faith in my work won me over, as did the really impressive support and technology his imprint provides to authors. Second, since I am a confirmed technophobe and can't type to save my life, my very clever and talented wife Judy turned my hundreds of sheets of yellow legal pads filled with late night scribbling into polished and proof read pages. Without Judy, neither this nor my last book would have seen print. I especially benefited from her patience with my being absorbed in writing almost every free moment for nearly four months. Books are not easy on spouses in the best of circumstances. I am often grumpy when overtired and under pressure, so I suspect no fun to have under foot. Third, my daughter Elizabeth Mellyn, who really is a scholar and teacher of history, offered great encouragement and good counsel to her amateur dad.

In order to write this type of book, the author needs the help of two kinds of people: teachers and mentors on one hand and constructive critics on the other. As for teacher, my education in finance and banking was an accident of personal history when in 1974 I left academic pursuits to make a living in the “real world,” a place for which I was and remain somewhat ill suited. I was lucky to get hired by the International Division of Manufacturers Hanover Trust and even luckier in my first boss and mentor, John Altenau. I spent the late 1970s and early 1980s with MHT in the City of London before it became Americanized. That experience has served me well ever since. It was in London that I first got drawn into a McKinsey project that led to my subsequent transition into management consulting. I cannot name everyone I learned about banking from in those MHT years but Harry Taylor, Fulvio Dobrich, and Sam Newman stand out. Later, as a consultant with the Mitchell Madison Group, I learned a great deal of what is in this book from my clients, especially Patrick Perry, then the Group Treasurer at Barclays. The list could become very long indeed.

As for readers and critics, the electronic publishing process leaves very little time between completing a manuscript and going into production so unavoidably many of the constructive comments of those kind enough to read my chapters are not reflected in the final text. I have tried to incorporate “red flags” where my arguments were running off the road, but for better or worse the errors in this book are mine.

My volunteer readers keep expanding but I would here like to thank author and journalist Duff McDonald, British political commentator Bruce Anderson, Kenneth Cukier of the Economist, Arthur Mitchell of White & Case in Tokyo, Takayoshi Hatayama of Abeam Consulting in Tokyo, economists Bernard Connolly and Matthew Saal, payments experts Eric Grover and Michael Lewis, as well as Angus Walker, Antony Elliot of Fairbanking, historian and author Louis Hyman, and Professor Hal Scott, director of the Harvard Law School Program on the International Financial System, legal scholar Fred Kellogg, David Asper of AT Kearney, Rajiv Shah of Deloitte, Andre Cappon of the CBM Group and Pierre Buhler for their interest and input. Many others have offered their encouragement and I hope no offense is taken by anyone I failed to mention.

Finally, writing a book like this over such a short time span would have been beyond my abilities without the helpful but firm support of the Apress staff, especially Rita Fernando.