Harrison Young has had a long and distinguished international career in banking and finance. He started in senior executive roles in major United States banks, then became a US financial regulator, with responsibility for the resolution of failing banks. He was also a director of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia for ten years, and was on the court of directors of the Bank of England.

His book, Prudence and Ambition, is part autobiography, part guidebook for those contemplating a career in banking. It cleverly weaves narrative about the author’s long, distinguished banking and finance career with insights about bank management and governance. Young is exceptionally well placed to provide insights into important issues in banking – and it shows.

Review: Prudence and Ambition, by Harrison Young (Ventura)

Young, who was born and educated in the US, now lives in Melbourne, Australia. He “stumbled into” banking, following five years in the US Army (where he describes everyone reading shared copies of Catch-22) and a brief stint as a Washington Post reporter. Someone told him big banks in Manhattan “would hire anyone who looked plausible, and would teach you to do whatever it was that bankers did”. So he bought a suit.

His first banking job was at Citibank (then First National City Bank), in 1971, rising to become an assistant vice president. In 1975, finding commercial banking “frustratingly tame”, he joined Morgan Stanley, investment banker for 15 of the 20 largest industrial corporations in the world, he writes – and for many governments and their agencies.

This was followed by a stint in Washington, regulating banks, at the Federal Deposit Insurance Commission (FDIC), before he returned to “the Firm” (Morgan Stanley) in 1994, aged 49 – partly because he had learned Mandarin in the army.

He was lured by the promise of living in Beijing, where the company had proposed the creation of China’s first investment banking firm, China International Capital Corporation: 35% owned by Morgan Stanley, 50% (in total) by two Chinese government entities.........

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