Tetsuya Ishikawa is a tease. A Gen-X banker whose CV lists jobs at Goldman Sachs Group and Morgan Stanley, he has written what sounds like a confessional memoir, How I Caused the Credit Crunch.
Don't be fooled. This 'insider's story' is cast as a novel about a London banker named Andrew Dover – a fresh-faced rake whose progress is littered with dancers, plenty of bubbly and one particularly incident over an office printer.
Is the story fact – or fiction? Any resemblance to actual people or firms is coincidental, Ishikawa says. Then he adds this double negative: 'That is not to say that the individual events in this book didn't happen'. I anticipate brisk sales in London's financial district, the City, when the book hits stores this week.
Ishikawa, 30, grew up in London, was educated at Eton and Oxford, and began his banking career in 2002, says publisher, Icon Books. His claim to fame: He structured, syndicated and sold collateralised debt obligations and credit instruments – the products that dragged us into this financial crisis.
By 2005, he had worked his way up to Goldman Sachs, says a biographical sketch provided by Icon; two years later, he jumped to Morgan Stanley. After the bubble popped, Morgan Stanley let him go with what Icon calls a 'high six-figure compensation package'. It was May 2008.
We invited spokesmen at both banks to comment on the book and its author, but neither did.
The story opens with Dover still at Oxford. He's so ignorant of finance he asks a bank recruiter to define 'fixed income'. "It's anything that has an income which is fixed," she replies. "Fixed. Income." (In the book, dialogue often turns into tutorial.)
Before long, he has joined the asset-backed securities group of Vandebor Bank, where a boss with the energy of a 'Duracell bunny' initiates him into the mysteries of mortgage-backed securities and the Spearmint Rhino club.
It's late 2001. The money, already good and soon Dover is hurtling toward the 'one buck club', the group of bankers paid more than $1 million (Dh3.67). He's only in his 20s but, hey, Ishikawa argues, what rational human wouldn't take the dough? I'd say it depends on how low you have to stoop to pick it up. But perhaps I'm missing the point. Compensation isn't just about performance, one Vandebor banker says of a colleague's $2m pay.
"It's more to do with the guarantee he might be able to get elsewhere," he says. "That's his market value."
For all its flaws – paper-thin characterisation, heavy German accents, references to 'my well-toned six pack' – the book succeeds as a lesson on the credit mess. Following Dover's career, we're reminded of the human failings, market forces and financial instruments that led us to this day.
The book offers a relatively painless way to learn the alphabet soup of securitisation – CDS, CDO squared, ABCP – though at times it feels as if The Wealthy Barber is walking his pupils through the trading floor. When a banker named Dipster asks for help with 'sieves', you can feel a lesson in SIVs coming.
Keep up with the latest business news from the region with the Emirates Business 24|7 daily newsletter. To subscribe to the newsletter, please click here.