Hit Refresh: A Memoir by Microsoft’s CEO

SHORTLISTED FOR THE FT AND MCKINSEY BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2019NEW YORK TIMES AND SUNDAY TIMES BUSINESS BESTSELLER’Reads more like a delicious page-turning novel…Put it on your holiday gift list for your favourite hedge-fund honcho’ Bloomberg’A compelling read’ Economist’Captivating’ New York Times book reviewJim Simons is the greatest moneymaker in modern financial history. His record bests those of legendary investors, including Warren Buffett, George Soros and Ray Dalio. Yet Simons and his strategies are shrouded in mystery. The financial industry has long craved a look inside Simons’s secretive hedge fund, Renaissance Technologies and veteran Wall Street Journal reporter Gregory Zuckerman delivers the goods.After a legendary career as a mathematician and a stint breaking Soviet codes, Simons set out to conquer financial markets with a radical approach. Simons hired physicists, mathematicians and computer scientists – most of whom knew little about finance – to amass piles of data and build algorithms hunting for the deeply hidden patterns in global markets. Experts scoffed, but Simons and his colleagues became some of the richest in the world, their strategy of creating mathematical models and crunching data embraced by almost every industry today.As Renaissance became a major player in the financial world, its executives began exerting influence on other areas. Simons became a major force in scientific research, education and Democratic politics, funding Hilary Clinton’s presidential campaign. While senior executive Robert Mercer is more responsible than anyone else for the Trump presidency – he placed Steve Bannon in the campaign, funded Trump’s victorious 2016 effort and backed alt-right publication Breitbart. Mercer also impacted the success of the Brexit campaign as he made significant investments in Cambridge Anatlytica. For all his prescience, Simons failed to anticipate how Mercer’s activity would impact his firm and the world.In this fast-paced narrative, Zuckerman examines how Simons launched a quantitative revolution on Wall Street, and reveals the impact that Simons, the quiet billionaire king of the quants, has had on worlds well beyond finance.

‘A fantastic, provocative book about where we are now and where we are going’ Phil Simon Huffington PostAmazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are the four most influential companies on the planet. Just about everyone thinks they know how they got there. Just about everyone is wrong.For all that’s been written about the Four over the last two decades, no one has captured their power and staggering success as insightfully as Scott Galloway.Instead of buying the myths these companies broadcast, Galloway asks fundamental questions:- How did the Four infiltrate our lives so completely that they’re almost impossible to avoid (or boycott)? – Why does the stock market forgive them for sins that would destroy other firms? – And as they race to become the world’s first trillion-dollar company, can anyone challenge them? In the same irreverent style that has made him one of the world’s most celebrated business professors, Galloway deconstructs the strategies of the Four that lurk beneath their shiny veneers. He shows how they manipulate the fundamental emotional needs that have driven us since our ancestors lived in caves, at a speed and scope others can’t match. And he reveals how you can apply the lessons of their ascent to your own business or career.Whether you want to compete with them, do business with them, or simply live in the world they dominate, you need to understand the Four.