His reputation is legendary. His life an adventure. His pursuers merciless. Florian Homm. A 6-foot-5 colossus. A wrecking ball. An unscrupulous hedge fund manager. The ugly face of the new turbo-charged capitalism. A mover and shaker, at 26, of millions for South American governments and the fabulously wealthy. A cold-hearted mercenary, he disemboweled companies auctioning off the best pieces to the highest bidder. A man who had scores of homes, two jets and hundreds of millions of dollars, but who still didn't have one thing: enough–instead he was driven to consume beyond excess.

As if in a daze, Florian Homm forged through his life with brutal efficiency. It began in Oberursel, a small town in Germany, and led him through Harvard into the heart of the financial markets. Both brilliant and charismatic, his career took off like a comet in the world's toughest business. In the course of his working life, he profited from the bankruptcy of the Vulkan shipping company in Bremen, rehabilitated the German soccer club Borussia Dortmund, and was gunned down in Venezuela. But even then, after a close shave with death, Florian Homm knew only one way forward: the race to the top. Until his recklessness caught up with him in a hard beat.

It's the story of a brilliant financial juggler, a runaway, a fugitive, the notorious enfant terrible of the European financial world.