Who deserves what they earn?  Seldom has this question been more relevant than now, as senior executives grab outrageous salaries while the companies they manage go bankrupt, and British parliamentarians fiddle their expenses. From jargon-spouting consultants to the financial “whiz kids” undertaking risky deals, oversized pay packets are justified on the flimsiest of grounds – that the recipients possess extraordinary talent without which no company or organisation could prosper. But the evidence suggests otherwise. This book explodes the myth of “talent”, and shows how the term has been deliberately misused and abused.  Pay Check aims to win capitalism back for those who actually take the risks, and expose those who merely snatch the rewards.

Short-listed for:
- Foyles Award for Paperback Original Non-Fiction, 2011 –

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The impact of multinational companies in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union 1989-2004
by Charles Paul Lewis

Despite widespread criticism of multinational companies, they have made an unparalleled contribution to the development of Eastern Europe over the past two decades. They have brought opportunities to the young, improved working conditions, saved communities from destitution, rehabilitated corrupt banking systems and laid a modern telecommunications network. They have improved and promoted local products, not destroyed them. Their exports have driven economic growth; their presence has boosted civil society. The impact has not always been positive, but their power and dynamism, if effectively harnessed, can help defeat poverty elsewhere too.

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A novel set in the frenetic gold rush of post-communist Russia before its all-too brief taste of raw capitalism collapses in the great economic crash of 1998. The brilliant but volatile Godunev, a former Moscow kiosk worker, returns from New York and Miami hoping to make a quick fortune while the country’s assets are still up for grabs. Using his hipster credentials to infiltrate Moscow’s aspirational emerging super-rich “biznismen” scene, he gets caught up in machinations to privatize the Kremlin, and eventually finds himself out of his depths in a Russia of oligarchs, gangsters, models and prostitutes that is hurtling towards its own demise. But amidst the violence, callousness and audacity of the time, Gudonev also reflects many of his countrymen’s sentiments: the passion of relationships; the extremities of life; a re-assertion of Russian culture; and a pervasive love-hate relationship with the US and the West.

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