Billions to Bust and Back

Billions to Bust and Back PDF Author: Thor Bjorgolfsson
Publisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 1782831169
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
Thor Bjorgolfsson is a self-styled adventure capitalist with an addiction to debt and an insatiable appetite for business deals who became Iceland's first billionaire. After 10 years establishing his financial empire with alco-pops and beer in the lawless 'Wild East' of newly-capitalist Russia in the 1990s, he moved on to merging, floating, spinning off and privatising businesses from Finland to Sweden, Poland, Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and the Czech Republic. On his 40th birthday, and worth $3.5 billion, he was sitting on top of the world; only 250 people in it were richer than him. His most spectacular triumph was the takeover of Iceland's second-largest bank, Landsbanki - he had expected his investment's value to double or treble in four years, and instead it rose ten-fold. But when financial meltdown hit Iceland in October 2008, Landsbanki crashed and burned, taking Bjorgolfsson with it. Within 12 months he had lost 3.3 billion euros - 98.5% of his wealth - and was treated as a scapegoat in his native country for supposedly bringing about the disaster. Faced with appalling debts, Bjorgolfsson has made good on his promises to repay his creditors, and at the age of 47 is now a billionaire once again.

Billions to Bust and Back

Billions to Bust and Back PDF Author: Thor Bjorgolfsson
Publisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 1782831169
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 334

Get Book Here

Book Description
Thor Bjorgolfsson is a self-styled adventure capitalist with an addiction to debt and an insatiable appetite for business deals who became Iceland's first billionaire. After 10 years establishing his financial empire with alco-pops and beer in the lawless 'Wild East' of newly-capitalist Russia in the 1990s, he moved on to merging, floating, spinning off and privatising businesses from Finland to Sweden, Poland, Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and the Czech Republic. On his 40th birthday, and worth $3.5 billion, he was sitting on top of the world; only 250 people in it were richer than him. His most spectacular triumph was the takeover of Iceland's second-largest bank, Landsbanki - he had expected his investment's value to double or treble in four years, and instead it rose ten-fold. But when financial meltdown hit Iceland in October 2008, Landsbanki crashed and burned, taking Bjorgolfsson with it. Within 12 months he had lost 3.3 billion euros - 98.5% of his wealth - and was treated as a scapegoat in his native country for supposedly bringing about the disaster. Faced with appalling debts, Bjorgolfsson has made good on his promises to repay his creditors, and at the age of 47 is now a billionaire once again.

Billions to Bust - and Beyond (New and Updated Edition)

Billions to Bust - and Beyond (New and Updated Edition) PDF Author: Thor Bjorgolfsson
Publisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 1805220241
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Thor Bjorgolfsson is a self-styled adventure capitalist who became Iceland's first billionaire: by his 40th birthday he had assets of around $4 billion. Among them was investment in Iceland's oldest bank, Landsbanki - but in the 2008 financial meltdown, Landsbanki crashed, taking Bjorgolfsson with it. He lost nearly everything, yet amazingly by 2014 had made good his losses, repaid his creditors and rebuilt his empire. This new and extensively revised edition brings the buccaneering story of his extraordinary and ambitious achievements fully up to date.

Jackpot

Jackpot PDF Author: Jason Ryan
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0762767995
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
In the late 1970s and early '80s, a cadre of freewheeling, Southern pot smugglers lived at the crossroads of Miami Vice and a Jimmy Buffett song. These irrepressible adventurers unloaded nearly a billion dollars worth of marijuana and hashish through the eastern seaboard’s marshes. Then came their undoing: Operation Jackpot, one of the largest drug investigations ever and an opening volley in Ronald Reagan’s War on Drugs. In Jackpot, author Jason Ryan takes us back to the heady days before drug smuggling was synonymous with deadly gunplay. During this golden age of marijuana trafficking, the country’s most prominent kingpins were a group of wayward and fun-loving Southern gentlemen who forsook college educations to sail drug-laden luxury sailboats across the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and the Caribbean. Les Riley, Barry Foy, and their comrades eschewed violence as much as they loved pleasure, and it was greed, lust, and disaster at sea that ultimately caught up with them, along with the law. In a cat-and-mouse game played out in exotic locations across the globe, the smugglers sailed through hurricanes, broke out of jail and survived encounters with armed militants in Colombia, Grenada and Lebanon. Based on years of research and interviews with imprisoned and recently released smugglers and the law enforcement agents who tracked them down, Jackpot is sure to become a classic story from America's controversial Drug Wars. “The adventures, the long-gone economy, and the sting that ultimately brought them down and changed US drug policy are meticulously documented and lucidly spun…. Part New Yorker feature-part Jimmy Buffet song. . . . The result is adventuresome, lavish, informative fun.” —GQ “[A] rollicking story, Ryan manages to pack in one amusing tale after another.... Jackpot is a rip-roaring good read.” —Charleston City Paper “High times on the high seas: Investigative reporter Ryan recounts the glory days of dope smuggling and their terrible denouement.... A well-told tale of true crime that provides a few good arguments for why it should not be a crime at all.” —Kirkus Reviews “Reads like an international thriller. . . . chock-a-block with hilarious and hair-raising anecdotes of fast times.” —New York Journal of Books “[A] thoroughly researched account of Operation Jackpot, the drug investigation that ended the reign of South Carolina’s ‘gentlemen smugglers,’.... Ryan recreates the era with a vivid, sun-drenched intensity.” —Publishers Weekly

Behind the Cloud

Behind the Cloud PDF Author: Marc Benioff
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470521163
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
How did salesforce.com grow from a start up in a rented apartment into the world's fastest growing software company in less than a decade? For the first time, Marc Benioff, the visionary founder, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com, tells how he and his team created and used new business, technology, and philanthropic models tailored to this time of extraordinary change. Showing how salesforce.com not only survived the dotcom implosion of 2001, but went on to define itself as the leader of the cloud computing revolution and spark a $46-billion dollar industry, Benioff's story will help business leaders and entrepreneurs stand out, innovate better, and grow faster in any economic climate. In Behind the Cloud, Benioff shares the strategies that have inspired employees, turned customers into evangelists, leveraged an ecosystem of partners, and allowed innovation to flourish.

Thought Economics

Thought Economics PDF Author: Vikas Shah
Publisher: Michael O'Mara Books
ISBN: 1789292670
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Including conversations with world leaders, Nobel prizewinners, business leaders, artists and Olympians, Vikas Shah quizzes the minds that matter on the big questions that concern us all.

This Time Is Different

This Time Is Different PDF Author: Carmen M. Reinhart
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691152640
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 513

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Book Description
An empirical investigation of financial crises during the last 800 years.

A Hundred Billion Ghosts

A Hundred Billion Ghosts PDF Author: DM Sinclair
Publisher: DMS Print
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
A man who lost his own body. The world's worst detective. Sugar frosted cereal. And every ghost ever. "This is a great story that started out funnier than heck then sucked me into the mystery. I could not put it down." - JBronder Book Reviews "Laced with poignancy, humor and loads of twists and turns. D.M. Sinclair has written a novel that I for one know I will read time and time again, and never get tired of it." - Rachel Reads The ghosts of every human who ever died just became visible. And they seem like they're going to hang around, maybe forever. If you had a chance to try out being one of them for a while, would you take it? Ryan Matney did. It didn't go well. Now he wants his body back. Except that somebody stole it, and will do anything to make sure he never finds it. With the help of a private detective who has never solved a case and a scientist with very little faith in science, Ryan haunts across the ghost-infested world trying to track down his missing body. He has just ten days to get back into it, or be obliterated.... forever. Also, he missed breakfast. That's less of a problem. But still a problem. A "hilarious and compelling" paranormal comedy thriller with "just the right balance of humor, poignancy, and twists".

Poke the Box

Poke the Box PDF Author: Seth Godin
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1591848253
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 98

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Book Description
"A one-two punch! Half kick in the ass, half cheerleading encouragement." —Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art If you are happy being just a dreamer, perhaps you don’t need this book. If you’re enjoying the status quo, don’t even consider reading this book. If you are content waiting for success to find you, please put this book down and go find something else to read. Why has Poke the Box become a cult classic? Because it’s a book that dares readers to do something they’re afraid of. It could be what you need, too. "Is Seth Godin the Pied Piper for however many of us have been afraid to fail? Will I answer his call? Will you?" —Peter Shermeta, reviewing the original edition of Poke the Box

Boom and Bust Banking

Boom and Bust Banking PDF Author: David M. Beckworth
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781598130768
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Exploring the forceful renewal of the boom-and-bust cycle after several decades of economic stability, this book is a research-based review of the factors that caused the 2008 recession. It offers cutting-edge diagnoses of the recession and prescriptions on how to boost the economy from leading economists. The book concentrates on the Federal Reserve and its leading role in creating the economic boom and recession of the 2000s. Aimed at professional economists and readers well versed in the basic workings of the economy, it includes innovative proposals on how to avoid future boom-and-bust cycles.

The Public Wealth of Nations

The Public Wealth of Nations PDF Author: Dag Detter
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 113751986X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
We have spent the last three decades engaged in a pointless and irrelevant debate about the relative merits of privatization or nationalization. We have been arguing about the wrong thing while sitting on a goldmine of assets. Don’t worry about who owns those assets, worry about whether they are managed effectively. Why does this matter? Because despite the Thatcher/ Reagan economic revolution, the largest pool of wealth in the world – a global total that is much larger than the world’s total pensions savings, and ten times the total of all the sovereign wealth funds on the planet – is still comprised of commercial assets that are held in public ownership. If professionally managed, they could generate an annual yield of 2.7 trillion dollars, more than current global spending on infrastructure: transport, power, water, and communications. Based on both economic research and hands-on experience from many countries, the authors argue that publicly owned commercial assets need to be taken out of the direct and distorting control of politicians and placed under professional management in a ‘National Wealth Fund’ or its local government equivalent. Such a move would trigger much-needed structural reforms in national economies, thus resurrect strained government finances, bolster ailing economic growth, and improve the fabric of democratic institutions. This radical, reforming book was named one of the "Books of the Year".by both the FT and The Economist.