as a short-cut into an excellent book on a great and successful corporate pursuit of a 'business' still 'valued' at €16bn in early 2020, just a few months before its demise. Much like I have been surprised for a year now that Swedish fintech company Klarna with a revenue model that is not known to be profitable led by people who have been conmen since their teens has such high level of capitalisation. Later in life, too, I would come to understand how fear and insecurity and clinging to worldly possessions can become a driving force in one’s life.

As the bread and wine made their ‘rounds, Grandfather prepared himself quietly before offering grace. Although McCrum’s book, Money Men may read like a gripping crime drama, it is a meticulously-documented account of a mind-boggling investigation that brought down one of Germany’s most celebrated fintech companies. McCrum is the investigative journalist at Financial Times who's exposé of the DAX 30 company Wirecard's accounting fraud took their market capitalisation from €24 billion (more than Deutche Bank) to € 0. Their hall of mirrors was constructed by generating revenue through mis-labeling transaction categories to process otherwise illegal payments; faking income then using the “profit” to acquire failing companies for multiples above market value (and bribing former owners into complicity); and cowering dissenters through aggressive PR counter-messaging, legal action, and phishing attacks from cyber security contractors.Being near him was like being seated next to a great mountain, with some mystery hidden on its heights, or some depth to him I couldn’t grasp. The next day I was in the poorest area in London, sitting at dad’s desk in an office under a railway arch.

Those fake asset purchases proliferated faster than rabbits, but to uncover the fraud meant knocking on doors in places like India, Singapore, and the Philippines – places with obscure address systems and people suspicious of foreigners looking under rocks.The great Moses Maimonides said, grandfather intoned, quoting the 12th-Century teacher of the Torah, "‘If I am not for me, then who is for me?

There is a lot of entertainment value in the approach of the author, Dan McCrum, but in terms of company-collapse books gets a 3. Instead, the next five minutes would more likely bring the office clerk, who would, as usual, drop one more thick and mundane legal brief in front of me. We were put here to help each other – and that meant both family as well as the greater community of the Jewish people. His parents are willing to give him an allowance, but that would mean doing all sorts of boring chores. Gone, too, was grandpa’s wonderful love for his children and grandchildren, and the quiet adoration for the mother of his children.Martha Weston was the author and illustrator of two charming picture books about Tuck, as well as the illustrator of Clarion's successful Owen Foote books by Stephanie Greene.