One Step Ahead: Private Equity and Hedge Funds After the Global Financial Crisis

by Timothy Spangler

A jargon-free guide to how investment funds operate and have broken free of the financial crises to grow and prosper

In One Step Ahead , Timothy Spangler – author of the award-winning Forbes.com blog “Law of the Market” – provides a compelling account of how flexible and entrepreneurial investment firms can prosper in a volatile and rapidly changing financial world.

From the Occupy Movement to the purchase of well-known household brands by private equity firms, Spangler investigates how the structures of alternative investment funds enable them to adapt and react nimbly and effectively to today’s shifting economic and financial landscape. Unpicking the debates and putting disputes in context, Spangler answers the difficult

One Step Ahead is the essential, jargon-free guide to understanding how private equity and hedge funds drive financial markets and how they have become vital wealth creation vehicles for both private and public investors in the global economy.

Genres: Finance

400 pages, Paperback

First published September 5, 2013

About the author

Timothy Spangler is a writer, commentator, lawyer and academic who divides his time between Southern California and the United Kingdom.

His award-winning syndicated foreign affairs column appears each week in the Orange County Register and the Jerusalem Post, as well as other newspapers across the US. His past columns are available on www.timothyspangleronline.com. Timothy has appeared on CNN, CNBC, BBC and Sky News, and has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Financial Times and the Economist.

He also writes the award winning blog, “Law of the Market,” dedicated to covering the politics of Wall Street regulation and the regulation of Wall Street politics (www.lawofthemarket.com and @lawofthemarket). The two decades he spent working on Wall Street and in the City of London has given him unlimited access to the inner workings of the global financial markets, and the trends that that are driving international affairs in the 21st century.

Timothy is currently an Adjunct Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law. He also serves as a Visiting Lecturer at the University College, London’s Faculty of Law and a Senior Fellow at the University of Melbourne School of Law.

When not contemplating the ridiculous and absurd aspects of life and politics around the world, Timothy follows the rising and falling fortunes of Fulham Football Club in the English Premier League, and beyond.

Reviews

[Vicki Gooding · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was sent to me from the author for which I am grateful. The information presented as a flexibility to financial change actually came across to me as a liberal political agenda. I had to wade through some of that to actually get to what I was hoping to find. This is an instruction manual of sorts regarding how hedge funds as well as private investing work on Wall Street, and larger business. He also revealed who may benefit the most. The book was careful not to direct people in any specific direction that might become good investments with changes that are currently happening globally He's well instructed, and I appreciated learning more about how big finance works. For being such a large book it still left a few unanswered thoughts; however, I would not hesitate to recommend it to others who have more at stake with Wall Street, or larger business.

[ManOfLaBook.com · Rating 5 out of 5]

One Step Ahead: Pri­vate Equity and Hedge Funds After the Global Finan­cial Cri­sis by Tim­o­thy Span­gler is a non-fiction book focus­ing on the mys­ter­ies of finance which seem to evade the layman.

One Step Ahead: Pri­vate Equity and Hedge Funds After the Global Finan­cial Cri­sis by Tim­o­thy Span­gler is one of those books I always wanted to read but couldn’t find. Mr. Span­gler offers a very infor­ma­tive, high level, infor­ma­tion about alter­na­tive invest­ments in a most read­able way.

The book is dense, choke full of infor­ma­tion for peo­ple like me, those who not just enough to cause dam­age before being stripped naked by Wall Street sharks. While I do not intend, nor do I have the funds, to invest in hedge funds or pri­vate equity, it is an inter­est­ing subject.

The sec­tion which I found the most inter­est­ing was about taxes and why the income made from invest­ments is taxed at a much lower rate from income earned by actu­ally work­ing. Mr. Span­gler argued both posi­tions quite clearly, I did not change my mind, but I cer­tainly under­stand the other side of the argu­ment much bet­ter. The author did change my mind about think­ing that the whole pri­vate equity finan­cial sys­tem is based on steal­ing money from the mid­dle class, he does delve into that per­cep­tion as well and admits that those finan­cial indus­tries do have a big PR problem.

Mr. Span­gler talks about the struc­ture of the funds, the oper­a­tions of both pri­vate equity and hedge funds, as well as their role in the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis. The author also dis­cusses finan­cial reg­u­la­tions, laws and enforce­ment (or lack thereof) and the issues with them (can you say “Congress”?).

This book has a lot of high qual­ity, help­ful finan­cial infor­ma­tion, yet it is very read­able. The author does not vil­ify, nor defend bad behav­ior. The author presents the facts about these finan­cial vehi­cles, both the con­tri­bu­tions to soci­ety as well as the theft and other shenanigans.

I got this book for free
For more reviews and bookish posts please visit: http://www.ManOfLaBook.com

[Chris Leuchtenburg · Rating 3 out of 5]

This defense of the private equity industry provides some interesting glimpses of this shadowy, less regulated corner of investing. Written by a lawyer, its lawyer's view dwells extensively on the bespoke arrangements, agreements, options, compensation plans, conflicts and challenges of various private equity vehicles. However, lumping together venture capital, leveraged buyouts and hedge funds makes sense only due to their minimal regulation and similar investor profiles (mostly university endowments and public retirement funds), but causes confusion when discussing their role in the economy or society. Funding new businesses (venture capital), buying-stripping-flipping (leveraged buyouts) and computerized betting on price changes (hedge funds) have very different impacts. Unfortunately, for me, it did not shed much light on how hedge funds make money. So, the author failed in his attempt to modify my political opinion.