As I write this post, I'm sitting in a coffee shop waiting to speak to a group of senior bankers at Ulster Bank about what we can learn from the history of financial crises. The four lessons I will be sharing with them are: (1) the 2008 crisis is totally different from anything that has come before in terms of its scale and scope; (2) if bankers aren't properly incentivised, they will take on too much risk; (3) asset markets can reverse, but this is only a concern if the assets are financed via debt; and (4) politics matters - crises ultimately have a political root.
Michael Aldous and I had our book The CEO: The Rise and Fall of Britain's Captains of Industry published a few weeks ago. You can find out more about it and buy it at Cambridge University Press's website . It is also available at Amazon , Waterstones , and Barnes & Noble . The CEO has already been reviewed in The Sunday Times , The Observer and Financial Times .