Banker to the World: Leadership Lessons From the Front Lines of Global Finance

Praise for Banker to the World

“No one knows better nor has more and better experience across the globe over the last 40 years in diagnosing and managing risks involving sovereign countries and major corporations. In today’s world, risk is a major external element in managing the strategy of a business. This book is clearly and simply written. It’s a must for all managers and all leaders who aspire to excel in the global game.”

—Ram Charan, co-author of the… (more)

Praise for Banker to the World

“No one knows better nor has more and better experience across the globe over the last 40 years in diagnosing and managing risks involving sovereign countries and major corporations. In today’s world, risk is a major external element in managing the strategy of a business. This book is clearly and simply written. It’s a must for all managers and all leaders who aspire to excel in the global game.”

—Ram Charan, co-author of the bestseller Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done

“Bill Rhodes has been much more than a banker. As Citibanks’s long-time “ambassador to the world,” he’s been both a diplomat and a surrogate government official—for several countries. Both heads of companies and heads of state have not only sought his advice but relied on him to make deals—and he has delivered time and time again. This little book tells you how. Everyone—or at least everyone that matters in international finance-—knows Bill Rhodes. And after you read this amazing memoir, you’ll know him, and his undauntable personality, too.”

—Alan Blinder, Gordon S. Rentschler Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, Princeton University

"...Once the immediate worry of a string of bank failures has abated, Berlin and Paris should then go about the business of restructuring errant countries' bank loans. The global community has been through this before. For a primer, Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron should read the short, breezily written but instructive book Banker to the World: Leadership Lessons from the Front Lines of Global Finance...by now-retired banker Bill Rhodes, who quarterbacked numerous, complex restructurings."

—Steve Forbes, "What's German for TARP," Forbes.com

"Rhodes's recollections are lively and richly detailed, replete with glimpses of top-ranking personalities from the world of banking and government interacting under pressure, and they provide a rare window into how these important but normally secretive operations of high-level international finance actually work. . . . Whether America’s bankers will run their firms more responsibly in the future remains an open question. They would do well to have people like William Rhodes in their senior management—and, next time around, to listen to them."

—The New York Review of Books

"Mr. Rhodes was one of the few members of the financial establishment to sense that the world was on the brink of a calamity in 2007 (most of the prophets of doom were either academic theoreticians or maverick financiers) . . . . In Banker to the World . . . Mr. Rhodes succeeds in hammering home three lessons that we need to take to heart if we are to have any chance of navigating the troubled waters that lie ahead. . . . Bankers to the world like Mr. Rhodes are buffetted from one unpredictable storm to another. They are forever on the verge of being ruined by events. And they rely on the seat of their pants as much as the power of their intellects. Mr. Rhodes is rightly proud of his record in defusing debt bombs and calming financial storms. Let's hope that his successors will be able to make similar boasts in the decades to come."

—The Wall Street Journal

"Bill Rhodes has been the consummate insider in international issues for more than three decades. He influenced U.S. and foreign policies on trade, exchange rates, and foreign debt resolution. Leaders around the world have benefited from Bill Rhodes’s advice. This book gives readers an honest review of the events and of the political leaders who made the key decisions."

—Professor Martin Feldstein, Department of Economics, Harvard University

"Bill Rhodes has made it his life’s w