My favourite books of 2022!

My 2022 reading included mostly biographies of titans of industry. Learn from the best or –. A bit of fiction I managed to squeeze in, and it was a marvellous dream-like flow state to read the novel that made my top-three books below. My own journalling was haphazard, but consistent enough. Words still resonate like magic spells in our mechanized world. Verbalizing a thought is a bit like giving birth. Being well-spoken and versed in writing, I cannot help but think, is one of the most powerful assets in the founder's toolchain. My private reading will continue to be married to work through intuitive links and subliminal kinship. A seemingly unrelated domain, such as a market dissimilar from your home turf, can help discern universal patterns pervading all markets. Reading for fun? As Aristotle says, the end of labor is to gain leisure.

The King of Oil – The Secret Lives of Marc Rich by Daniel Ammann

Marc Rich is a legendary oil trader operating throughout Cold War times who at some point was wanted by US authorities for orchestrating the biggest tax evasion scheme in history (eventually, he was exonerated). Rich "made deals with the devil", i.e. supplied oil to embargoed rogue states such as Iran. In a legalistic sense, the loopholes he found and exploited to conduct trade gave his deals the veneer of lawfulness. He never broke a law – until certain factions displeased with his activities started framing things in a very unfavorable way. Politicization of economic affairs quickly introduces double standards into the sphere of commerce that tarnish the credibility of overreaching governments. After all, Rich's discrete services in sourcing barrels from questionable providers were in great demand by Western powers as well. My take-aways from the book are that markets are murky by definition, regulation can be weaponized by entrenched interests and interested parties to quench newcomers and competitors and that arbitraging the grey zone in any market may seem like a windfall at first, but comes with high-interest legal risk down the road.

Alfred Herrhausen – Eine deutsche Karriere by Andreas Platthaus

Alfred Herrhausen was CEO of Deutsche Bank back when banking was still a gentleman's business savouring manners, education and guts. He was murdered in an assassination involving a laser-guided road bomb, a crime officially attributed to the RAF, but the curious mind will find excellent documentaries produced by German state television painting a different picture. Herrhausen was an absolute outlier in terms of intellect, charisma and ambition. As an adolescent he was educated and indoctrinated in a National-Socialist elite school, later turning into a fervent proponent of the German-style social market economy. One very touching passage recounts how Herrhausen made his way home alone in post-war Germany in '45, covering 600km as a 16-year-old among the biggest physical devastation and psychological destitution imaginable. Talking about resilience! Later in life, Herrhausen embraced a meritocratic ideal that attests the capable and driven the right to dwell at the top of society and be at the levers of power to steer society toward a common good. No sugarcoating here! Herrhausen also spearheaded initiatives to erase debt of "third-world nations" to level the playing field in a globalized world. Incidentally, such a coordinated move by the creditors would have enabled Deutsche Bank to clean up their balance sheets. Honni soit qui mal y pense! Very good writing all along, fascinating protagonist, great technical bits about the privatization of the electricity markets in the '60s, the strategemes executed to get mergers and acquisitions done, as well as an all-around riveting read about the inner life of a charming power broker who was the last of his kind in the breadth of his learning.

Die Tatarenwüste by Dino Buzatti

A hypnotic tale about a soldier stationed at a remote fortress growing old doing nothing, hyperrealist in its surgical portrayal of the everyday automatisms that carry us through life. Brutal and imbued with a dark, yet gentle sense of humor how Buzzati dissects the lies incessantly whispered by our inner monologue to rationalize indolence, passivity and fatalism in the face of death creeping closer with each passing day. The book is full of beautiful phantasmagoric descriptions of the mountains, hinting at the existence of something eternal beyond the realm of transience. The story is set in an alternate reality of sorts that has rifles and a certain degree of industrialization but seems uncannily detached from the timeline of the 20th century. It's like the throw-away insignia of the opportune narratives propelling history are stripped away and the mundane contraptions of the age of technology are molten into their archetypal functions to reveal the dream-like flow of hungering emotions that make up life. Masterful novel!