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SPIDERWEB CAPITALISM

Kimberly Kay Hoang

How Global Elites Exploit Frontier Markets

A behind-the-scenes look at how the rich and powerful use offshore shell corporations to conceal their wealth and make themselves richer

In 2015, the anonymous leak of the Panama Papers brought to light millions of financial and legal documents exposing how the superrich hide their money using complex webs of offshore vehicles. Spiderweb Capitalism takes you inside this shadow economy, uncovering the mechanics behind the invisible, mundane networks of lawyers, accountants, company secretaries, and fixers who facilitate the illicit movement of wealth across borders and around the globe.

Kimberly Kay Hoang traveled more than 350,000 miles and conducted hundreds of in-depth interviews with private wealth managers, fund managers, entrepreneurs, C-suite executives, bankers, auditors, and other financial professionals. She traces the flow of capital from offshore funds in places like the Cayman Islands, Samoa, and Panama to special-purpose vehicles and holding companies in Singapore and Hong Kong, and how it finds its way into risky markets onshore in Vietnam and Myanmar. Hoang reveals the strategies behind spiderweb capitalism and examines the moral dilemmas of making money in legal, financial, and political gray zones.

Dazzlingly written, Spiderweb Capitalism sheds critical light on how global elites capitalize on risky frontier markets, and deepens our understanding of the paradoxical ways in which global economic growth is sustained through states where the line separating the legal from the corrupt is not always clear.

Kimberly Kay Hoang is associate professor of sociology at the University of Chicago.
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Published 2022-09-01 by Princeton University Press

Comments

“Kimberly Kay Hoang has done groundbreaking fieldwork shedding light on the complex web of offshore subsidiaries through which capital is channeled and protected in emerging markets. This book, which summarizes this work in a clear and engaging manner, is essential reading to understand global twenty-first-century capitalism.” —Gabriel Zucman, author of The Hidden Wealth of Nations “In this groundbreaking and gripping book, Hoang invites us to walk into the spider's parlor that is the universe of global high finance. Her piercing prose lays bare the intricate webs of dealings the superrich are free to weave, with secretions that dissolve the legal, moral, institutional, and sovereign boundaries trapping the rest of the world. A brave and powerful treatise on the making of twenty-first-century capital.” —Ching Kwan Lee, author of The Specter of Global China