THE CITY AND INVESTMENT

Beware propaganda, false claims and hype. The 20th anniversary of the 'Big Bang' saw a lot of that sort of stuff. The most likely sources of misleading information are the financial markets themselves, a vast array of committed free-marketeers and strangely, politicians, many of whom fall over themselves to gush about the wonders of the City and its benefits.
The real story of the impact of the City on the UK is much more complex and mixed - for example, ask anybody involved in the private pensions scandal or ordinary people who want to buy a house in London.

• The Death of Gentlemanly Capitalism. Philip Augar. Penguin Books, 2001.
  Well written inside story of the failure of UK investment banks to compete after the 1986 Big Bang.
• The Greed Merchants: How the Investment Banks Played the Free Market Game. Philip Augar. Allen Lane, 2005. Expose of the work, value and cost of Investment Bankers
• The City. Tony Golding. Prentice Hall, 2002. Excellent description of the inner workings of the investment markets
• Strategy and Financialisation - Narrative and Numbers. Julie Froud et al.
  Seminal research of the impacts of the investment markets on the strategies of large companies in UK and US. Thoroughly researched and quite frightening!
• 'UK Corporate Governance and Innovation.' Professor Andrew Tylecote, University of Sheffield Business School and Dr Paulina Ramirez, Centre on Innovation and Structural Change, University of Ireland, Galway.
  Original research demonstrating the aversion of UK institutional investors to investing in R&D or innovation and contrasting this with the US.
  The same authors are to publish their research in a book to appear in 2007, titled 'The technological wealth of nations'.
• The end of shareholder value. A. Kennedy, 2000. Orion Business books, London. One of the first people to question the underlying sense of the shareholder value movement.
• I. Janus. Groupthink. Houghton Mifflin. Boston. 1982. Professor Janus describes the tendency of tight- knit groups(as in the City) to close ranks on ideas and facts they don't want to know.

Private Equity and the Culture of Value Extraction.

Julie Froud and Karel Williams. Manchester Business School Centre for Research in Socio-Cultural Change.

At last! Here is a cool and readable piece of investigation by some experienced economists and business academics. The private equity debate has degenerated into(if it ever rose above) a slanging match between proponents and detractors, generating more heat than light.
Many of those whose voices are to be heard most loudly either have a demonstrable axe to grind or appear to be plain ignorant.
This measured paper cuts through the bullshit and provides an objective view of the private equity industry.
To be avoided by all those who wish to avoid objectivity or distort the truth!