Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction - Hardcover

Enrich, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0062878816 ISBN 13: 9780062878816

Publisher: Mariner Books, 2020

Synopsis

A searing exposé of the most scandalous bank in the world, including its shadowy ties to Donald Trump’s business empire

On a rainy Sunday in 2014, a senior executive at Deutsche Bank was found hanging in his London apartment. Bill Broeksmit had helped build the 150-year-old financial institution into a global colossus, and his sudden death was a mystery, made more so by the bank’s efforts to deter investigation. Broeksmit, it turned out, was a man who knew too much.

In Dark Towers, award-winning journalist David Enrich reveals the truth about Deutsche Bank and its epic path of devastation. Tracing the bank’s history back to its propping up of a default-prone American developer in the 1880s, helping the Nazis build Auschwitz, and wooing Eastern Bloc authoritarians, he shows how in the 1990s, via a succession of hard-charging executives, Deutsche made a fateful decision to pursue Wall Street riches, often at the expense of ethics and the law.

Soon, the bank was manipulating markets, violating international sanctions to aid terrorist regimes, scamming investors, defrauding regulators, and laundering money for Russian oligarchs. Ever desperate for an American foothold, Deutsche also started doing business with a self-promoting real estate magnate nearly every other bank in the world deemed too dangerous to touch: Donald Trump. Over the next twenty years, Deutsche executives loaned billions to Trump, the Kushner family, and an array of scandal-tarred clients, including convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Dark Towers is the never-before-told saga of how Deutsche Bank became the global face of financial recklessness and criminality—the corporate equivalent of a weapon of mass destruction. It is also the story of a man who was consumed by fear of what he’d seen at the bank—and his son’s obsessive search for the secrets he kept.

About this title

About the Author

David Enrich is the Finance Editor at the New York Times. He previously was the Financial Enterprise Editor of the Wall Street Journal, heading a team of investigative reporters. Before that, he was the Journal’s European Banking Editor, based in London, and a Journal reporter in New York. He has won numerous journalism awards, including the 2016 Gerald Loeb Award for feature writing. His first book, The Spider Network: How a Math Genius and Gang of Scheming Bankers Pulled Off On of The Greatest Scams in History was short-listed for the Financial Times Best Book of the Year award. Enrich grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts, and graduated from Claremont McKenna College in California. He currently lives in New York with his wife and two sons.

Review

“In Dark Towers, David Enrich tells the story of how one of the world’s mightiest banks careened off the rails, threatening everything from our financial system to our democracy through its reckless entanglement with Donald Trump. Darkly fascinating and yet all too real, it’s a tale that will keep you up at night.” (John Carreyrou, Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times bestselling author of Bad Blood)

“In this case, ‘epic’ is right - Dark Towers is a mystery, a thriller, a father-son drama. Did I mention Donald Trump? It’s a distinctly American drama of greed, hubris and power that kept me racing to the finish.” (James B. Stewart, Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author of Den of Thieves and Deep State)

“As entertaining as the colorful character portraits are, what makes The Spider Network truly memorable are the portraits of the various institutions that made the scandal not just possible but inevitable.” (New York Times on The Spider Network)

“A thrilling tour de force of reporting, revelation and reasoning. For anyone who wants to understand what really went on inside a scam of epic proportions, The Spider Network is unmissable.” (Iain Martin, author of Crash Bang Wallop, on The Spider Network)

“A feat of reporting, and much of it reads like a novel. . . . Enrich’s unfettered access to Hayes and his keen eye for detail make for a compelling portrait of a gifted but troubled man.” (Washington Post on The Spider Network)

“A damning look at the culture of trader chicanery... Enrich has sidestepped the temptation to slip into author-as-prosecutor mode, instead going the wry tour guide route to lucidly (and often hilariously) usher readers through the Looney Tunes world that wrought l’affaire Libor.” (John Helyar, coauthor of Barbarians at the Gate)

“[Enrich’s] impressive reporting and writing chops are on full display in The Spider Network... From the start, the book reads like a fast-paced John le Carré thriller, and never lets up.” (William D. Cohan, New York Times Book Review, on The Spider Network)

“With an unerring eye for detail, Enrich shows in this masterful work how a toxic stew of greed, arrogance and a lust for power led to a criminal scheme of unparalleled dimensions. It should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand the dirty underbelly of the financial world.” (Kurt Eichenwald, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Informant, on The Spider Network)

“This dwarfs by orders of magnitude any financial scams in the history of markets.” (Andrew Lo, professor of finance at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

“So how did a socially awkward English math whiz mastermind manipulation of lending rates on a global scale? ... In David Enrich’s gripping tale, the characters have nicknames worthy of the Mafia, and their ethical compasses aren’t much better.” (Paul Ingrassia, Pulitzer Prize winner, bestselling author of Crash Course)

About this edition

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Publication date: 2020
• ISBN 10: 0062878816
• ISBN 13: 9780062878816
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 416