New Book by a former CDO Structurer: "How I Caused the Credit Crunch"

[Lucky Luciano]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a8m7w1GaO39s

April 10 (Bloomberg) -- Tetsuya Ishikawa is a tease.

A Gen-X banker whose CV lists jobs at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley, he has written what sounds like a confessional memoir, “How I Caused the Credit Crunch.”

Don’t be fooled. This “insider’s story” is cast as a novel about a London banker named Andrew Dover -- a fresh-faced rake whose progress is littered with lap dancers, guzzled Cristal and one particularly tacky tryst over an office printer.

Is the story fact -- or fiction? Any resemblance to actual people or firms is coincidental, Ishikawa says. Then he adds this double negative: “That is not to say that the individual events in this book didn’t happen.” I anticipate brisk sales in London’s financial district, the City, when the book hits the stores next week.

Ishikawa, 30, grew up in London, was educated at Eton and Oxford, and began his banking career in 2002, says his publisher, Icon Books Ltd. His claim to fame: He structured, syndicated and sold collateralized debt obligations and other credit instruments -- the products that dragged us into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

By 2005, he had worked his way up to Goldman Sachs, says a biographical sketch provided by Icon; two years later, he jumped to Morgan Stanley. After the bubble popped, Morgan Stanley let him go with what Icon calls a “high six-figure compensation package.” It was May 2008.

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