Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #161356 in Books
• Published on: 2000-11-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Customer Reviews

'The City' by Tony Golding- a must buy!
For readers with all degrees of knowledge, Tony Golding offers an invaluable overview of the workings of The City. With chapters ranging from how the city actually came to be the financial centre of England, interpreting confused concepts such as ‘investment banking’ and ‘liquidity’, and explaining the mind-set of fund managers, Golding gives the reader a non-biased, dispassionate analysis.

Golding is not afraid to tell the reader how it really is. He criticises when it is appropriate and praises when necessary. He concentrates on equities, and details clearly how the change of ownership from private to institutional investors has come about in recent years. He shows how perception holds far more weight than reality with regard to stock valuation and states clearly and precisely what most British commentators try hard not to admit: the victory of the ‘US model.’

It is absolutely essential that this book retain pride of place on the bookshelf of investors, those employed in the City or for anyone with the slightest bit of interest in the inner and outer workings of ‘The Great Expectation machine.’

Tony Golding tells "tells it how it is"
To the outsider the City is bewilderingly complex. Not a place, but a set of interrelated activities: investment banking, corporate stockbroking, fund management, venture capital and all the paraphernalia that links funding to business.

In his book Tony Golding writes a history of the City, describes how it works, and explains the psychology of its participants. Such a colossal accumulation of wealth in the hands of so few can only have profound implications for the ordinary investor, and as Golding shows, it does.

Far from being a wallflower the City these days is the disk jockey. Companies dance to its tune and the ultimate sources of funding (you and I) are not even invited to the party. Yet the analysts, bankers and fund managers occupying centre stage are victims of circumstance too. Their behaviour is apparently perverse, but actually, says Golding, it is entirely logical.

To keep alive the conceit of steady progress, so essential to executive bonuses and fund manager remuneration, analysts drip-feed information to investors and the media using techniques to maximise the good news and bury the bad. It's a process akin to political spin sanitised by the label 'investor relations'.

These are a few of the more lurid insights Golding supplies into the "great expectation machine" and the characters that run it. With under performance, dodgy analysis and greed the norm, and the implications that has for small investors, savers and employees, the reality of the City is clearly flawed.

Changes will be made, lawyers stalking investment banks and governments scrutinising the business of finance will make sure of it, but Golding's book, part manual and part analysis, shows it took us centuries to get here. Fiddling with the rulebook is unlikely to revolutionise the game. At least in "telling it like it is", Tony Golding gives the determined reader and private investor the opportunity to make more sense of the City, warts and all.

Take it.

An Excellent Overview for the Outsider
Inside the City provides an excellent overview of how international markets function and how they've evolved in recent years. Its clarity and insights make it brilliantly easy to see through the complexities of the subject, as well as understand the issues and failings of the investment industry. As a layman I came away realizing the financial world is no longer a mystery - and with enough understanding to talk business with professional city contacts.