All You Need to Know About the City 2011: Who Does What and Why in London's Financial Markets (All You Need to Know Guides) [Paperback]

The global financial crisis has made what goes in the City of London's financial markets more important and relevant than ever.

What is the credit crunch and sub-prime lending? What are toxic tranches and SIVs and why do they matter?

If you're working in, or are thinking of working in the City, this book gives you the answers. Designed to be a quick and easy read, it explains what everything is and how it all connects.

As the author - a City insider - says:
"This is all I've ever needed to know in almost 30 years of working in and around the City" --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

It’s your first day at work. Your clothes are starchy new. Your shoes are stiff and pinch your feet. You don’t know what you’re doing or where you’re going. Everyone else seems to be so much more knowledgeable and confident. Everyone must be looking at you.
There goes that City new bug, they must be thinking.
Whatever you do or say, you don’t want to look an idiot.
You don’t want to torpedo your career – which stretches ahead of you, the weeks, the months, the years – on day one.
Relax. Read this book.
If this is you – and, don’t worry, we’ve all been there – this book tells you what you need to know about the City, and gives you the confidence to ask questions to find out more.
Maybe that isn’t you.
Maybe you’re walking round the City’s dark alleyways. You pause, look through an office window and see people at monitors. What are they doing?
This book tells you.
Maybe you’re at Canary Wharf, craning your neck to peer up at the tall towers. What kind of businesses need that much space?
The answers are in the next few pages.
Maybe you’re at a dinner party and the attractive person next to you says they’re ‘an investment banker’ or ‘a fixed-income trader’ or – even worse – ‘a forex trader who does cable’. What can you say that will impress the pants off them?
Read this book. It could change your love life.
Maybe you’re an armchair investor, scanning the personal finance pages of the Sunday papers. You find they’re written in gobbledygook.
This book cracks the code.
Maybe you’re studying. You need to know about the City for your assessment. Maybe you’re wondering what your studies will lead to. Maybe the City.
Read this book. Sorted.
Above all, if you’re working in, or are thinking of working in, or are thinking of having anything to do with, the City, and feel overawed and stupid because you don’t understand it, then this is the book for you.
Who this book is for?
This book is aimed principally at young, front-line, fee-earning professionals in the City – bankers, brokers, fund managers, lawyers, accountants, insurance brokers, surveyors, actuaries, patent attorneys, PRs, recruiters and headhunters, among others, starting out on their careers.
But it’s also for support staff such as secretaries, PAs and business managers as well as people in mid-office and back-office functions such as Accounts, HR, IT, Business Development, PR, compliance, settlement and custody – in other words, professionals who are specialists in their own jobs but need to understand what the fee-earners do in order to support them in their roles. That’s because for City institutions to compete these days, all of their people need to understand the business.
But this book is designed to be simple. So it’s also for students at school, college or university who are thinking of working in the City or need to understand it for their studies. This book isn’t restricted to the young and inexperienced, either. The course on which it’s based has been delivered by me to a roomful of regulators. Nor just to those in the City. Many people based outside London need to know what goes on in the City because it affects their work or their clients or their pensions and savings. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.