At the end of October, the winner of the prestigious Financial Times/Goldman Sachs business book of the year award will be announced at a swanky dinner in New York.
The chosen author will walk away with a first prize of £30,000 ($47,000), enhanced book sales and membership of a roll of honour that includes previous winners such as Mohamed El-Erian and Liaquat Ahmed.
The latter, whose work The Lords of Finance took the prize last year, has joined the 2010 judging panel, which once again is chaired by FT editor Lionel Barber.
Last year, Barber’s co-chair was none other than Goldman chief executive Lloyd Blankfein. But there’s no sign of him this year. No doubt Blankfein is a little too busy to read all the six shortlisted tomes, what with paying out hundreds of million dollars in fines and trying to face down regulators who would put an end to the Goldman business model.
But look again, and you’ll see that there’s no one from Goldman at all on the six-strong judging panel. Perhaps that’s not surprising given that one of the books in with a shout is Too Big to Fail, Andrew Ross Sorkin’s compelling account of the fall of Lehman Brothers and its aftermath, in which narrative both Blankfein and Goldman figure prominently.