Too Big to Jail: Inside HSBC, the Mexican drug cartels and the greatest banking scandal of the century

This is definitely a book to read if you are interested in some of the inner workings of the financial services industry. If you are working or have worked at the bank, it is definitely worth a read. The book is well researched and provides context and background for novices to the world of financial services and HSBC. It is interesting to read. Chris has interesting observations to make about the bank’s culture and its history.

It has some interesting parts when talking about individuals the author has met, but overall I suspect many bank’s stories would be more interesting.

If you live in the London area and read the Evening Standard newspaper, then you will likely know the author from his business articles and briefings that appear regularly in their Business section. His tracking of the history of HSBC through writing those columns seems to have been the genesis for this book. It covers how this global bank in pursuing growth at all costs between 2003 and 2010, lost its direction. Instead, it became the bank of choice for money laundering of their cash mountain by the rapidly growing Sinaloa drug cartel in Mexico under its ruthless head El Chapo.The story of how HSBC in making a bank acquisition in Mexico did not do its homework and took over a bank whose poor systems made it susceptible to the explosive growth of the need to move vast illegal narco-funds through US dollar markets was fatal enough. However, as the book covers numerous warning signs were visible but simply ignored by senior management if profits were generated for the bank. Add to this a bank culture where the use of tax havens was promoted to help conceal such funds and the subsequent growing interest by Mexican and USA authorities on what was happening, with the inevitable nemesis in major record-breaking financial fines being levied against the bank was inevitable.The book however makes clear, as its title implies, that this outcome was the direct result of meddling by UK government in protecting its major bank (George Osborne then the Chancellor of Exchequer does not come out well from this section). Most critically, the unwillingness to pursue criminal convictions by the various US agencies especially the Department of Justice who held all the evidence, meant that no prosecutions were ever instigated against any member of HSBC management despite all their failings.While the author gets all this story across well, the book’s main failing despite his depiction of duplicity and moral outrage against what the bank did, is to not address better the failings of the law in the prosecution of money laundering offences against delinquent senior management. Until that flaw in the law and its prosecution is addressed, the continuation of criminal acts being committed by financial institutions who if when caught only face financial fines is likely to continue.

I was engrossed in the almost unbelievable account of how this happened. Disturbing, but an education.

Excellente Grazie

Well written, lucid and entertaining, albeit appalling. If this were a novel or a TV serial, the bad guys would eventually be brought to justice. Mr Blackhurst’s evident outrage that this has not been the case drives every page of this excellent book and elevates it somewhat above the general run of schadenfreude-laden business books about the incompetence and illegality of so much “big business”.

Anyone who is averse to economics or politics, or is worried that this book falls into Stephen Hawkins territory (i.e. looks impressive but is unreadable) can rest assured that Too Big To Jail is like a gripping thriller. People already familiar with Chris Blackhurst’s newspaper articles will know he is a very pragmatic and highly readable commentator on the financial and political world. He has that very rare ability to make economics interesting to the general reader. This is a book that deserves to become a film or docudrama. You will read this book slack jawed with amazement that first, the events took place at all, and that second, the guilty in the main escaped punishment. To put into context, think of any robbery or heist that has made the headlines. Even the very biggest of these involved the theft of well under one percent of the sums involved here. And the highest authorities in the land turned a blind eye. Not only that, they blocked the police from pursuing the matter. If I had to choose one book to illustrate what is rotten in our current economic world, this is it.