The Wall Street Journal's award-winning business reporter unveils the bizarre and sinister story of how a math genius named Tom Hayes, a handful of outrageous confederates, and a deeply corrupt banking system ignited one of the greatest financial scandals in history.

In 2006, an oddball group of bankers, traders and brokers from some of the world s largest financial institutions made a startling realization: Libor the London interbank offered rate, which determines the interest rates on trillions in loans worldwide was set daily by a small group of easily manipulated functionaries, and that they could reap huge profits by nudging it to suit their trading portfolios. Tom Hayes, a brilliant but troubled mathematician, became the lynchpin of a wild alliance that among others included a French trader nicknamed Gollum ; the broker Abbo, who liked to publicly strip naked when drinking; a Kazakh chicken farmer turned something short of financial whiz kid; a broker known as Village (short for Village Idiot ) and fascinated with human-animal sex; an executive called Clumpy because of his patchwork hair loss; and a broker uncreatively nicknamed Big Nose. Eventually known as the Spider Network, Hayes s circle generated untold riches until it all unraveled in spectacularly vicious, backstabbing fashion.

The Spider Network is not only a rollicking account of the scam, but a provocative examination of a financial system that was crooked throughout, designed to promote envelope-pushing behavior while shielding higher-ups from the consequences of their subordinates rapacious actions.