Following the 2008 market crash, humans were keen to witness wealthy bankers to be imprisoned for their reckless playing with the economic structure. However, when things crumble, is it reasonable to criticize the people that were finance specialists, or instead, should we glance at the way the banking structure is made?
These book chapters attempt to tell answers to this inquiry by narrating the tale of Hayes, the notorious math expert that found himself getting the blame for the financial industry’s careless routine of controlling annual percentages of interest. Starting with the guiltless meal deals he did while he was young, following with him being labeled the criminal architect of this “Spider Network,” his tale is explained in detail. You’ll discover the way the world’s most popular canon index for interest rate – Libor – has been controlled, and the thing that occurs when bankers, brokers, and traders are permitted to work without oversight.
Chapter 1 – Hayes has regularly been good with numbers; however, he had a problem of having friends.
While Tom Hayes was a child, he had a skill for quantitative material and understood how to make a favorable bid.
At the time he was only 15 years in 1995 and lived around Winchester of the UK, Hayes loaned his meal cash to his peer at an interest rate of 50%. This method, for each £5 Hayes lent out, he would make himself a good two and a half pounds profit.
During that period, he was captivated by the vending devices that might be seen at regional bars too. He would observe one closely, work out the structure of it, and regularly attack at the correct moment to acquire a handover.
Sadly, Hayes’s skills in maths appeared to have a price, since he has usually been poor in social skills and having friends.
While Hayes was still in the academy, he was treated badly because of his propensity to dress pretty clean, wearing a clear blazer jacket.
Not having a favorable male exemplar did not assist in things as well. After his father cheated on his mother, his dad left his knowledge really early on.
However, the reason why Hayes found it difficult to have relationships was probably a tender and undetected type of Asperger’s.
All the signs were in place: He was able to concentrate extremely on difficult quantitative problems, he constantly refrained from shared eye gaze and anytime he was angry, he could suddenly become angry.
What consoled him was the trustworthy reasoning of mathematics, and that is the thing that enticed him into the stock exchange.
Around 1999, at the time Hayes was studying in the university, he did his internship at a global bank of Switzerland, UBS, and grasped the fundamentals of exchanging bonds and stocks. From that point, Hayes became addicted to the complex environment of finance and, during 2001 – Fall, got a persistent position at Scotland’s Royal Bank.
Chapter 2 – A vital however confusing interest rate has been Libor that has been very related to the industry of derivatives.
At the time Hayes was at Scotland’s Royal Bank, he was taught the complex function of Libor, a standard benchmark that means London Interbank Offered Rate and is utilized globally to know the rate of interest.
The Libor has been chosen by having specific banks of London frequently put forward the mean rating of the thing it charges for these banks to loan money. That rate basically shows the price further banks have been giving them to ask for a loan. As soon as those quantities are put forward, their mean is taken, and this number becomes the existing Libor and is utilized as a canon for different kinds of purposes, like mortgages.
Different territories own their Libor of different types. For instance, there is Japan’s Tibor – the Tokyo Interbank Offered Rate – for Japanese yen. However, Libor is common globally because the pound of Britain has been seen to be a steadier and stronger currency.
However, here’s the issue: there has been no structure to confirm that acceptance of banks was correct. For over a long time, banks were basically believed to present accurate quantities.
Currently, once Tom Hayes started his job in banking, Libor had already been the canon benchmark of banks globally. When you would like to check the particulars of any credit card dues or loans, you would probably notice a credential to LIBOR.
Also, Hayes discovered that Libor had a huge part of derivatives that were getting gradually common at the beginning of 2000. The derivative has been similar to an agreement that financial institutions may make use of to protect themselves against particular risks –like a client not making mortgage payments.
Therefore, at the time Bank A prepares a mortgage, it may also purchase the derivative that states that Bank B would compensate Bank A when the client avoids that mortgage.
However, this is only one form of derivative. Financial institutions were making derivatives in terms of insurance with nearly all deals they have been doing. And Libor fixed the utility of a lot of those derivatives.
Chapter 3 – Hayes joined a big global team that controlled Libor ratings to profit the corporations of their financial institutions.
Hayes immediately turned out achievement in finance. That was as if Hayes’ brain had been effortlessly made for this type of job. Therefore, around 2006, following earning millions on account of Scotland’s Royal Bank, he agreed on a proposal to put effort for UBS; however, this time around on account of their Japanese branch.
Hayes kept proving how sound his math abilities might be utilized in the difficult work including derivatives and changing ratings of interest. He turned out really skilled at operating the industry in Japan that Hayes’ name was shortly known as a dominant power in that aspect of the world of finance.
Hayes first got to know that it was feasible to earn profits with the manipulation of Libor when he was at UBS. All Hayes needed to function had been contacting brokers that would afterward persuade the individuals in control of presenting their financial institution’s Libor detail to manipulate the quantities.
Following a few initial achievements, a normal procedure occurred:
Firstly, Hayes would purchase some derivatives owning utilities that would rise according to the increase or decrease of the Libor. In addition, according to the type he purchased; he could afterward tell dealers to mention what he required: Libor, either doing down or up.
Tom’s dealers afterward made contact with the Libor presenters, usually proposing them a great compensation, with guidance on which mode they wanted Libor to follow. Most times, the submitters accepted the proposal, and anyone had a payoff day, particularly UBS.
But, unknown to Hayes, his dealers had discovered an important cutoff for this procedure:
Darrell Read, a dealer, knew a person called Colin Goodman, a person that had another common document, which he was distributing to other finance specialists each day. An attribute of Goodman’s document had been a recommended Libor rating for presenters to put in.
Therefore, all Read needed to do for making UBS and Hayes glad was persuade Goodman to enter the correct quantity in his document. It’s understood that Libor presenters, just like many people, are very lazy. And instead of checking every transaction of the financial institution to compute the mean price of raising a loan, they basically copied Goodman’s idea.
Chapter 4 – Deceitful financial institutions allowed manipulating Libor for so many years, making UBS and Hayes get millions.
What was the way Hayes reward dealers for proceeding with his plan? A go-to compensation for him was the switch commerce.
That comprises 2 dealers, Dealers A and Dealer B, having a broker for creating a trade worth millions of dollars. Initially, the trade should follow a path, A – B, afterward a concise moment after the same commerce would be done in the opposite path, B – A.
By doing this, anything among the dealers evens out, the broker obtains 2 huge commissions with the value of 1000s of USD.
A different more outdated compensation was basically providing traders and brokers with wine and dine.
Currently, it is significant to understand that manipulating Libor was supported by bank CEOs.
Hayes’s boss, Mike Pieri, at UBS, knew very well of manipulating LIBOR. He assured that Hayes would have quitted the manipulation of LIBOR when Pieri wanted him to end that. However, UBS was getting obscene sums of money all through Hayes’ schemes; therefore, obviously, Pieri had never performed the least attempt to cease this.
Hayes was getting nearly 10 million USD daily for UBS around 2007; in 2009 only, he made well more than 100 million USD. The CEOs at UBS had been delighted, and they attempted to make Hayes delighted by assuring him huge end-of-the-year rewards.
However, UBS wasn’t just the bank that had an interest in Hayes. Also, Citibank executives were aware of his skill in acquiring money. Following UBS’s failure to give him the promises of bonuses, Citibank successfully enticed Hayes and acquired him to his team with the aid of 3 million USD of signature extra.
In addition, just like before, Chris Cecere, fresh Citibank boss of Hayes, was willing to provide Hayes anything he required to do his wizardry in manipulating LIBOR. CEO of Citibank, Brian McCappin, assisted by calling on behalf of Hayes in order for other banks to cooperate.
Chapter 5 – Following Hayes quitted the poisonous surroundings of UBS, others started to see Libor’s weird attitude.
At this stage of the tale, it is essential to bear in mind Hayes’s nature and know that starting with his childhood, he had experienced difficult times in having peers.
This issue persisted as a grown-up, and one might even say that it became poorer around the aggressive macho work surroundings of financial institutions, where people easily use swear words and love giving each other offensive nicknames.
Hayes worked together with finance specialists owning nicknames such as “Abbo,” the short form of “Aboriginal,” in addition to “Derka Derka” – the nickname for a trader who was born in Kazakhstan talking about the manner in which people from Arabia in the movie South Park talk.
Hayes attempted to suit this thrusting environment and, just like every other person, he could shout offensiveness at others at the time he did not have his way. However, everybody around the office became sick of his violence and sensed that he always took the screaming and confrontations really extreme.
What they weren’t aware of had been that Hayes got an undetected incidence of Asperger’s that had been a major factor in his social inability. Therefore, everybody in UBS had been really excited at the time Hayes went to Citibank around 2009 – anyone, namely, apart from his manager Mike Pieri, feeling extremely cheated by him and would yearn for payback.
As Hayes’s misfortune had been in place, Pieri had been close to getting a perfect means to have his payback. After the 2008’s market crash, people were keen to witness rich bankers jailed, and detectives were starting to discover that something strange was happening with Libor.
Among the initial people to notice Libor’s odd fluctuations had been Carrick Mollenkamp, a reporter of Wall Street. He noticed that although the financial institutions had recently gone through the crash of the market, and some of them had even stated bankruptcy, none of these could be observed with the Libor.
Therefore, it didn’t take time for CFTC, the UK’s fraud office, and the Department of Justice to investigate this. In 2009, March, these institutions published formal investigations to a lot of banks, as well as one of them to UBS. Pieri replied.
Chapter 6 – Hayes, perplexed and annoyed, was thwarted by his previous coworkers with the Libor inspection concluded.
Before Hayes clocked thirty, UK’s bank Barclays replied to CFTC’s demand for data with candid proof of the Libor meddling. Wishing for mercy by acting as collaborative as they could be, the bank of Barclays even added an audiotape of 2 Barclays workers discussing getting CEO commands for manipulating LIBOR.
That was currently getting obvious that the environment of finance was the location of a novel form of extensive, systemic misconduct. In addition, as more proof appeared, Hayes saw himself being selected as the only “rotten apple” after all of it.
Particularly damning was the evidence of his previous colleagues and spiteful manager at UBS, who gave investigators adequate information to get Hayes apprehended on the 11th of December 2012.
At that time Hayes had already married Sarah Tighe, they even had a young son; the intensifying incidence contrary to him really stagnated him that he went to his wife and inquired, with earnestness, “It would be good for our son and you if I were dead, would not it?”
This suicidal thought had been a great illustration of the way Hayes’s frozen mind functioned; however, he ultimately stopped thinking about it and got the power to defend himself. When the time came to go to the court, he had chosen that Hayes did not wish for his child to be raised seeing him as a criminal. Therefore, he replied with a strong, “Not in the wrong.”
His rebuttal advocate gave a correct depiction of him as an outcome of a bribe structure that had been controlling Libor for a long time before he discovered the way to make it alone. In spite of what his previous coworkers might tell, he wasn’t a criminal architect.
The word “Spider Network” had been created by Cecere, the CEO of Hayes at Citibank, the person that participated in the ensemble of individuals that were avoiding blame by picking the mastermind of a huge criminal web as Hayes.
The rebuttal even clarified that Asperger’s provided Hayes very inclined to the power used by his executives. At the time the individuals responsible backed his work in the Libor appeals, he had sensed like there was no requirement to doubt it.
Chapter 7 – Hayes had been the scapegoat of a bribe and damaged banking procedure.
The fact is, that got so much of a coordinated and cooperative struggle for the Libor ratings to be modified in order for others and Hayes to gain from them. Although Hayes may be a hard individual to do business with, this Libor misconduct occurred due to the reason that the banking structure gave traders and brokers lessons to gain more anyway they might.
However, when it was time for judgment, Hayes had been the sole person to be sentenced, and that was not a less punishment: he had been convicted for 14 years of imprisonment.
Sarah cried when the verdict was passed, and whereas the duration for having the appeal was in progress, she as well as her son doesn’t have a dada and husband.
Unluckily, there were a lot of people who didn’t like the difficult and irritating Hayes, and all of them were really eager to tell lies and blame him instead of taking a part in the accusation themselves.
In England, 6 other traders, as well as Hayes’s steady trader, Read, had also been on trial; however, none of them was told blameworthy; all of them accused Hayes and described him like a behemoth.
During that time, at England’s Southampton University, at least a person is attempting to mend the wrongdoing and damaged structure starting with the base, by educating traders of the future.
Stenfors has been a previous broker who had been sacked out of Merrill Lynch as a result of his connection in manipulating LIBOR. Similar to Hayes, he considered himself a part of a structure that completely encourages wrongdoing, bribery, and lying to succeed. Therefore, he utilized his joblessness as an opportunity to have a Ph.D. in London. The thesis he worked on was an explanation of what truly occurred in the scandal of LIBOR.
Presently, Stenfors instructs a lecture that comprises a presentation named “Rotten Apples, Rogue Traders, and Risk Takers.” That deals with the theory after the callous and morally dishonest financial structure.
But, although he used an hour describing the ugly truths of elevated finance, Stenfors still is called by teenage men keen to jump into this unethical chasm and become rich fast.
The Spider Network: The Wild Story of a Math Genius, a Gang of Backstabbing Bankers, and One of the Greatest Scams in Financial History by David Enrich Book Review
After the incident of the financial crisis of 2008, people wished to witness rich bankers locked up for the means they inattentively manipulated the structure of finance. Although it’s correct that brokers and traders have high-stakes risks with other people’s millions of dollars, we don’t have to essentially blame only them alone. They’re the result of a structure directed by selfish executives and financial specialists who support this act and compensate it with indecent premiums. When we own any aim of preventing further chaos, we should not be imprisoning people such as Hayes. We have to discover a method to repair the structure itself.
