Mr Charming (Hardback) - Michael Harrison

'Catch Me If You Can' meets 'The Big Short' - the charming sociopath financier who ran away with millions.

He was the scion of a wealthy German textiles empire, an extravagantly successful day trader and a respected film producer. But he was also the cruellest of fraudsters. Over a period of 12 years, Felix Vossen conned his best friends and closest colleagues out of tens of millions of pounds. When he ran out of friends to defraud he stole from his family. His Midas-like ability to spot the rising stars of the stock markets disguised the fact that he was a pathological liar whose investment empire was built on a giant deceit. Empathy and trust were the tools he used to lure and then betray his victims. Mr Charming charts the double life of Vossen and captures the drama of the international manhunt as his fraud collapses and he goes on the run. Why did Vossen's victims put their money into something that was too good to be true? But more importantly, how did his banks and the financial watchdogs allow him to get away with it for so long?

About the Author

Michael Harrison is a journalist, writer and former corporate adviser. He was one of the founder members of The Independent in 1986, going on to become the newspaper's Business Editor and Deputy City Editor of the Evening Standard. He was named Business Journalist of the Year in 2001 in the British Press Awards for his expose of the secretive world of nuclear waste reprocessing and commended in this category on a further two occasions. During a career in financial journalism spanning twenty five years he reported on some of the biggest stories of the day, including the Guinness and BCCI scandals, the collapse of Barings Bank, the demise of the carmaker Rover and the privatisation of Britain's water, power, rail, airline and telecoms industries. He also covered the major events of the period that shook the world economy - Black Monday, Black Thursday, the dot.com crash of 2000 and the global recession that followed 9/11. After leaving business journalism in 2007, he worked in corporate advisory for some of Britain's biggest companies on crisis communications, corporate reputation and mergers and acquisitions. He has now returned to journalism as a columnist with the Evening Standard.