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The Rise and Fall of the City of Money
£9.99
Edinburgh's Extraordinary Financial Story
Ray Perman on the rise and decline of Edinburgh as a global financial centre
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About the Ebook
It started and ended with a financial catastrophe. The Darien disaster of 1700 drove Scotland into union with England, but spawned the institutions which transformed Edinburgh into a global financial centre. The crash of 2008 wrecked the city's two largest and oldest banks – and its reputation. In the three intervening centuries, Edinburgh became a hothouse of financial innovation, prudent banking, reliable insurance and smart investing. The face of the city changed too as money transformed it from medieval squalor to Georgian elegance.This is the story, not just of the institutions which were respected worldwide, but of the personalities too, such as the two hard-drinking Presbyterian ministers who founded the first actuarially-based pension fund; Sir Walter Scott, who faced financial ruin, but wrote his way out of it; the men who financed American railways and eastern rubber plantations with Scottish money; and Fred Goodwin, notorious CEO of RBS, who took the bank to be the biggest in the world, but crashed and burned in 2008.Why You'll Love This Ebook
- Discover how Edinburgh became one of the world's great financial capitals
- Learn about the collapse that reshaped Scotland's economy and identity
- Engage with authoritative writing on a defining Scottish institution
- Read another celebrated title from Birlinn Ltd - Independent Scottish Publisher
About the Author
Ray Perman, a writer and journalist for 30 years, was chair of the James Hutton Institute and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, of which Hutton was a founder member. His books include Hubris: How HBOS Wrecked the Best Bank in Britain, The Rise and Fall of the City of Money and The Man Who Gave Away His Island.Publication Details
Publisher: Birlinn Ltd
Publication Date: 10 October 2019
Print Length: 336 pages (Ebook edition)
ISBN (Ebook): 9781788852296
Format: Ebook
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