Dark Towers

A searing expose by an award-winning journalist of the most scandalous bank in the world, including its shadowy ties to Donald Trump's business empire.

In January 2017, Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States. As he delivered his fiery Inaugural address, a grey-haired woman named Rosemary Vrablic sat in the VIP section of the audience. Vrablic was an executive at Deutsche Bank, and without her, Donald Trump probably wouldn't have been moving into the White House.

This is the never-before-told story of how a 150-year-old German bank became the global face of financial recklessness and criminality, a history that traces back to its role helping the Nazis build Auschwitz. In the 1990s, a succession of hard-charging executives made the fateful decision to chase Wall Street riches-and set Deutsche Bank on an epic path of devastation. Its sins included manipulating markets, violating international sanctions, and laundering money for Russian oligarchs.

Desperate for an American foothold, Deutsche started doing business with a self-promoting real estate magnate who most banks deemed too dangerous to touch: Donald Trump. Over the next 20 years, Deutsche executives-including a man with a damaged brain, the son of a Supreme Court justice, and Rosemary Vrablic-loaned billions to Trump and the Kushner family. Why?

To unravel this mystery, the book traces the rise and fall of Bill Broeksmit, an American executive who was regarded as the conscience of Deutsche Bank. In 2014, he was found hanging in his London apartment. His son gets access to Broeksmit's computer files and embarks on a wild quest to understand why his father killed himself. The answers he finds will help explain how Deutsche Bank became the financial equivalent of a weapon of mass destruction.

“"New York Times finance editor Enrich's immersion in this shadowy world of monetary malfeasance shows how the disreputable world of big-stakes banking could topple an equally unscrupulous president."”

“As entertaining as the colorful character portraits are, what makes The Spider Network truly memorable are the portraits of the various institutions that made the scandal not just possible but inevitable.” -- New York Times on The Spider Network
“A thrilling tour de force of reporting, revelation and reasoning. For anyone who wants to understand what really went on inside a scam of epic proportions, The Spider Network is unmissable.” -- Iain Martin, author of Crash Bang Wallop, on The Spider Network
“A feat of reporting, and much of it reads like a novel. . . . Enrich’s unfettered access to Hayes and his keen eye for detail make for a compelling portrait of a gifted but troubled man.” -- Washington Post on The Spider Network
“A damning look at the culture of trader chicanery… Enrich has sidestepped the temptation to slip into author-as-prosecutor mode, instead going the wry tour guide route to lucidly (and often hilariously) usher readers through the Looney Tunes world that wrought l’affaire Libor.” -- John Helyar, coauthor of Barbarians at the Gate
“[Enrich’s] impressive reporting and writing chops are on full display in The Spider Network… From the start, the book reads like a fast-paced John le Carré thriller, and never lets up.” -- William D. Cohan, New York Times Book Review, on The Spider Network
“With an unerring eye for detail, Enrich shows in this masterful work how a toxic stew of greed, arrogance and a lust for power led to a criminal scheme of unparalleled dimensions. It should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand the dirty underbelly of the financial world.” -- Kurt Eichenwald, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Informant, on The Spider Network
“This dwarfs by orders of magnitude any financial scams in the history of markets.” -- Andrew Lo, professor of finance at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“So how did a socially awkward English math whiz mastermind manipulation of lending rates on a global scale? … In David Enrich’s gripping tale, the characters have nicknames worthy of the Mafia, and their ethical compasses aren’t much better.” -- Paul Ingrassia, Pulitzer Prize winner, bestselling author of Crash Course
“Mr. Enrich effectively uses the unique access he secured to the mildly autistic UBS trader, Tom Hayes, who became the fall guy for the unfolding scandal, to produce a surprisingly human narrative....” -- Jonathan A. Knee, New York Times DealBook
“David Enrich has written an incredibly entertaining, globe-straddling inside account of how one trader turbocharged a greedy cabal that scammed savers and borrowers everywhere. A must read if you want to understand how big banks and traders really work.” -- Marcus Brauchli, former Executive Editor of the Washington Post and Managing Editor of the Wall Street Journal
“Dare I say it, but The Spider Network will snare you in its web of deceit, lies, corruption, manipulation and colorful characters. David Enrich’s brilliant investigative expose will reverberate from Wall Street to Main Street.” -- Harlan Coben, bestselling author of Home and Fool Me Once, on The Spider Network

David Enrich is the Finance Editor at the New York Times. He previously was the Financial Enterprise Editor of the Wall Street Journal, heading a team of investigative reporters. Before that, he was the Journal's European Banking Editor, based in London, and a Journal reporter in New York. He has won numerous journalism awards, including the 2016 Gerald Loeb Award for feature writing. His first book, The Spider Network was short-listed for the Financial Times Best Book of the Year award. Enrich grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts, and graduated from Claremont McKenna College in California. He currently lives in New York with his wife and two sons.

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