The culture of greed, arrogance and deceit that investment banks had fostered for years is now facing intense public scrutiny. Some believe they represent the unacceptable face of capitalism. Many say that the unethical working practices that have been at the heart of many of these scandals still remain rife in the investment banking sector today. 

‘City of Thieves’ is the story of an analyst who dared to challenge such working practices. It is highly reflective of the ultimate modern day capitalist institution … it is credible … it is authentic … and it is scandalous.

The context for City of Thieves
Over the last decade, Wall Street and the City of London have been hit by a series of financial scandals. Yet few white collar criminals have been prosecuted. The banking industry has money, power and connections - and is not afraid to use them.

In 2002, when a young New York Attorney General called Eliot Spitzer exposed the unethical working practices pursued by the world's 'bulge bracket' investment banking houses, he incurred their wrath and later found himself embroiled in a prostitution racket that brought him down. Since then, no one has been able to bring investment bankers to account - not even governments.

Today, as a result of the financial meltdown created by the reckless lending of the world's largest banks, we are facing the biggest ever crisis in public confidence since the Great Depression. Governments appear to be paralysed as they wrestle in vain with new policies designed to protect the tax payer from "moral hazard" - the concept that bankers will continue to take excessive risks with other people's money as long as they know that the government will be there to bail them out.

Here are just some of the stories that made the headlines in recent years: 

• 2000: The internet bubble, created by over-inflated analyst expectations, finally burst, causing pensioners and savers to lose billions of dollars in telecoms, technology and internet stocks

• 2001: Enron, MCI WorldCom and Arthur Anderson all went bankrupt on the back of executive fraud

• 2002: New York’s Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer, fined the top ten US investment banks $1.4 billion for deliberately pursuing unethical working practices in their research divisions. He was later discredited by a prostitution scandal 

• 2004: The FBI unearthed a billion dollar foreign exchange scandal involving staff at six leading global investment banks

• 2005: Martha Stewart, the world’s first woman billionaire, was convicted of insider-trading and sent to jail

• 2006: Trades unions complained that private equity bankers on multi-million dollar packages ‘paid less tax than their cleaning ladies’

• 2007: The Bank of England presided over the first run on a British bank (Northern Rock) since 1866, and the credit crunch kicked off

• 2008: Bear Stearns, a top tier US investment bank, went bankrupt. Later some of the greatest names in global banking - Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch - simply disappeared as credit losses mounted there too. Other household names like AIG, Citibank and Lloyds TSB were part-nationalised.

• 2009: Sir Fred Goodwin, boss of RBS, refused to forfeit his £700,000 per annum pension even as the public revolted against a bonus system that ‘rewards failure'

• 2009: Bernie Madoff is sentenced to 150 years in jail for conning ordinary investors out of $50 billion.