Other People's Money: The Real Business of Finance
Sir John Kay is one of Britain’s leading economists. His interests focus on the relationships between economics and business. His career has spanned academic work and think tanks, business schools, company directorships, consultancies and investment companies. For twenty years, he wrote a regular column for the Financial Times. He was awarded a knighthood in the Queen’s 2021 Birthday Honours List for services to economics, business and finance.
His witty and authoritative style has won a wide following for his books and articles, which have been recognised by numerous awards and prizes. Forty years after he co-authored The British Tax System (a book which went through five editions) with Mervyn King (who would later become Governor of the Bank of England and Lord King of Lothbury), the two authors came together again with a very different subject. Radical Uncertainty was published by The Bridge Street Press in March 2020.
John’s latest book Greed is Dead, written jointly with Sir Paul Collier, was published by Penguin Books in July 2020.
The best way to follow John’s writing is via this website www.johnkay.com. You can receive a Twitter feed or email link to such new material in the ‘stay connected’ section.
“Other People’s Money: The Real Business of Finance” by John Kay explores the purpose of finance and the problems that have arisen in the finance sector over the past three decades. Kay argues that the finance sector has become too large, attracts too many of the smartest college graduates, and has created a structure that lacks resilience and supports absurd volumes of trading. The book critiques the excessive focus on secondary-market dealing in existing assets and the lack of attention given to the search for new investment opportunities and the stewardship of existing ones. Kay believes that good banks and effective asset managers are necessary but that the finance sector has lost sight of its primary purpose of managing other people’s money for the benefit of businesses and households.
The book was named a Financial Times Book of the Year, an Economist Best Book of the Year, and a Bloomberg Best Book of the Year in 2015.
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