Wealth management is the practice of helping the rich get richer while at the same time depriving the public coffers of economic resources that would otherwise derive from tax revenues. It is a term used in the elite retail divisions of international banks, referring to a professional service that combines financial advice, tax strategy and legal planning for a fee.

With help from tax havens and the supranational legal frameworks that support them, clients of private banks benefit from insider information and a powerful network of influences that operate in such a way that their wealth can keep on accumulating. Private banks, like other powerful organisations, are masters of euphemism: they communicate with a sophisticated, clean, professional language, both written and visual, that invites the rich to join them and enjoy the ecstasy of accumulation.

This book is about a vision of the world of the ultra-rich and their agents: a supposedly better life, where money does not always bring happiness and where the greatest luxury of all is to be invisible, inaccessible, and therefore invulnerable.