The Rise and Fall of the City of Money: A Financial History of Edinburgh

by Ray Perman

It started and ended with a financial catastrophe. The Darien disaster of 1700 drove Scotland into union with England, but spawned the institutions which transformed Edinburgh into a global financial centre. The crash of 2008 wrecked the city’s two largest and oldest banks – and its reputation. In the three intervening centuries, Edinburgh became a hothouse of financial innovation, prudent banking, reliable insurance and smart investing. The face of the city changed too as money transformed it from medieval squalor to Georgian elegance.

This is the story, not just of the institutions which were respected worldwide, but of the personalities too, such as the two hard-drinking Presbyterian ministers who founded the first actuarially-based pension fund; Sir Walter Scott, who faced financial ruin, but wrote his way out of it; the men who financed American railways and eastern rubber plantations with Scottish money; and Fred Goodwin, notorious CEO of RBS, who took the bank to be the biggest in the world, but crashed and burned in 2008.

Genres: History, Business, Economics

336 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 10, 2019

About the author

Ray Perman, a writer and journalist for 30 years, was chair of the James Hutton Institute and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, of which Hutton was a founder member. His previous books include The Rise and Fall of the City of MoneyThe Man Who Gave Away His Island.

Reviews

[M Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A history of the financial institutions from Edinburgh, which is a really good idea that could easily be copied in Boston, Chicago and Montreal.

Perman does a tremendous job until the final 2009 debacle, when his style switches from historian to journalist.

[Darren Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book for those with an interest in the topic of those wishing to learn more

[Duncan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good book, authors name is whack though

[Simon · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's a good book about Edinburgh's financial history