Synopsis

The Spider Network is the almost-unbelievable and darkly entertaining inside account of the Libor scandal – one of history’s biggest, farthest-reaching scams to hit Wall Street since the global financial crisis, written by the only journalist with access to Tom Hayes before he was imprisoned for 14 years.

Revealing never-before-seen details into the inner-workings and private lives of those involved, and with ramifications that reach across the British establishment – from the Labour Party to the Bank of England – The Spider Network is a gripping, thriller-esque story with a host of unusual characters and financial excess that will draw comparisons to bestsellers The Wolf of Wall Street and The Big Short, but with its roots in Canary Wharf.

A culmination of years of investigative journalism by David Enrich, using emails, text messages and his secret relationship with Tom Hayes – a brilliant but troubled mathematician with Asperger’s syndrome – The Spider Network follows Tom and a group of British bankers as they stumble on a way to manipulate the obscure number responsible for the interest rates of trillions in loans worldwide (Libor).

Featuring a mismatched cast – including a prickly French trader ‘Gollum’, a broker nicknamed ‘Abbo’ who likes to publicly strip naked when drinking, a nervous former Kazakh chicken farmer known as ‘Derka Derka’, and a karaoke-loving executive who falsely claimed to be a member of 1990s pop group Ocean Colour Scene – this group generated incredible riches. Then it all unravelled in spectacularly vicious, backstabbing fashion.

With unparalleled access to key characters and evidence, The Spider Network is not only a rollicking account of the scandal, but also a provocative examination of a financial system that was crooked throughout, the consequences of which are still rippling through the world today.