Pounce

About the Book

Move over, Wealthy Barber! Here comes the Rich and Randy Butcher to lead investors through the next stages!

Tom Morison's Pounce: Cochon's Billions is a satirical novel that pokes fun at the hidden world of high finance. A humorous warning to those who are tempted by the allure of quick wealth, the story exposes the slick sales pitches, the hype, and the false promises of the financial industry. With a strong sense of the ridiculous, Pounce lampoons money managers who have forgotten the true nature of their trade and chaffs the uninitiated who dream of outfoxing the pros.

The novel's hero, Harry Cochon, is a quiet, unobtrusive country butcher until he wins the lottery and suddenly finds himself seduced by grand fancies that have never before crossed his mind. An innocent in the world of Machiavellian stratagems, Harry sets out naively to become a financial tycoon. En route, he encounters a motley cast of characters, including his mentors--Lord Mewe, sophisticated aristocrat and rising star in the heart of the City, London's financial district; and John Maise, the big, brash American, equally at home in Iowa corn fields and New York penthouse board rooms. Under their tutelage, Harry is swept along to the offices and fiefdoms of insiders.

In London, he meets such wheeler-dealers as Alice Blondwyn, a monetary economist who is seldom right in her prognostications but always cool and haughty in her revisions; Mary Pnu, an inscrutable half-western oriental who delivers an impeccable synergistic logic; Alvin Greenfinger, alias Reginald Ross, the pompous ass who affects accents and embroiders a fictitious past in order to emulate his idols, the English aristocracy; and Hope Goldbricker, who lures Harry to bed and into financial intrigue.

In New York, Harry comes face to face with Bobby Bonds, titan of finance, a staggeringly powerful man with a loud voice, elevator shoes, and a stable of nubile young secretaries hanging on his every word. Harry also meets such oddities as Randy Walker, a former barker with Royal American Shows; Edel Fineline, with his visceral response to the markets; and Old Bill, with his lovely big red nose, his appreciation of the liquid lunch, and his good sense and honesty. And in the corridors of the fast-paced investment world, Harry meets beautiful, sexy, and calculating Mitsy--and discovers that seduction can take many forms.

Pounce puts much of money management in its true perspective of guesswork, emotional ridiculousness, self-interest, even mysticism... It should be required reading for every broker, money manager, investment advisor, CFA or MBA candidate and, above all, corporate executives of publicly-traded companies.

About the Author

Tom Morison writes with an insider's knowledge of the world of high finance. Starting with a doctorate in economics from the University of Innsbuck, Austria, Morison climbed the ladder of success to ownership of Morison International, an investment management company that he started and subsequently sold to a bank at a profit that would make even Harry Cochon smile appreciatively. In between, the author's fascinating career took him into the inner sanctums of the investment world. In the 1960s, he did time as one of the first institutional investment economists and was director of investment research for the world's largest mutual fund. While there, he investigated many of the investment practices that today's promoters use to cloak high finance in the mantle of science. In the 1970s, he was known as one of the boldest and most daring of the money managers, wheeling and dealing in the dizzy world of hedge funds--until the market crash ended that endeavour abruptly. At various times, he was advisor to an English merchant bank and American Express and sat with other directors from around the globe on the board of an international bond fund. In these capacities, he travelled the world, rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous of the time and encountering many who started out as advisors on Wall Street and in the City who are today's movers and shakers in monetary affairs, international finance, and government policy.

With a lively wit and pointed satire, Morison takes the reader into the heady, treacherous, and sometimes seedy, often deceptive, and always ludicrous world of high finance that he knows so well.