Sex, Lies, and Financial Scandal WALL STREET INSIDER-NOVELIST: MURDER AMIDST WALL STREET CORRUPTION
Insider trading schemes and Wall Street corruption are sensational enough – throw in a murder conspiracy that stands between a public relations executive and a call girl, and you have a compelling thriller. This is what readers will find in Shakedown, the debut novel from award-winning Indie Next List author Andie Ryan.
While the story of a massive insider trading scheme at Wall Street’s most highly regarded financial powerhouse is fictitious, the unraveling of such elaborate financial corruption rings disturbingly close to real life. The novel’s scandal parallels the arrogance and sense of entitlement so alarmingly present in news stories of Bernard Madoff and Galleon Group, something Ryan, a Wall Street veteran with more than 20 years of senior management experience at major firms, knows a thing or two about.
“Shakedown’s plot is scarily plausible,” says Ryan. “But a key question arising from this story isn’t so much why real scandals continue to occur in the aftermath of sweeping regulation, but why they don’t surface more often. We read about payoffs to accountants and legal loopholes and regulators looking the other way, and we think this is new. How many of us are really immune to bribes or job threats? How many of us think we can afford to say no when we’re asked to do something illegal?”
Ryan believes that most financial fraud is nearly impossible to prevent because the sophisticated technology and resources needed to detect it proactively are too costly. Instead, Ryan suggests it’s time for more meaningful deterrents to financial crime, better funded internal oversight that is staffed by experts, and stronger leadership. “Strong leadership is at least as critical as regulation and deterrent,” comments Ryan.
“If a CFO says he never wants to hear about problems, or if you’re asked in an interview what kind of information you can deliver about other companies, that messaging can set off a chain reaction of complacency and non-compliance. Similarly, making it clear that certain things will not be tolerated, at any level, sends another kind of message. It all starts at the top. “And yet, management is under tremendous competitive pressure to perform relative to earnings and shareholder returns.
If you add a few people who are financially or psychologically vulnerable to being a ‘player’ – and that includes remaining silent in the face of wrongdoing – organizational and personal pressures can create serious conflicts. There is no easy solution.” Andie Ryan is a Wall Street veteran with more than 20 years of senior internal audit and compliance experience at major financial services firms, most recently as Managing Director.
She holds an undergraduate degree in English and an MBA from the University of California at Berkeley. Ryan co-authored a negotiation exercise that was published by the Dispute Resolution Research Center (DRRC) at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.
The exercise, Where’s Alvin? A Case of Lost Ethics, focuses on a manager’s ethical dilemma in which negotiating parties have personal stakes. Ryan currently works as an independent management consultant focusing on regulatory and operational requirements for broker dealers. She is at work on a prequel to Shakedown.
For further information please visit www.andieryan.com. Shakedown is priced at US $23.95 (US $15.95 paperback).
