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 –

About the author

David Bolchover is a management writer. His best-selling first book, “The 90-Minute Manager” (2002), looked at the lessons that business managers can learn from football managers. His second book, “The Living Dead” (2005), counters the orthodoxy about stress and overwork. It was serialised in The Times, and was named as one of the books of the year in Management Today. ”Highly commended” in the Watson Wyatt Awards for HR journalism in both 2007 and 2008, he has written extensively for The Times, Economist Intelligence Unit, The Sunday Times and The Daily Telegraph and others. He holds an MBA from Cass Business School and a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics. He spent twelve years working in the international insurance industry.

To order a copy of Pay Check go to Amazon.co.uk

Praise for Pay Check

Pay Check is a bold and impassioned book, rich in wry humour, thoughtfully argued throughout…highly persuasive…the starting-point for a worthy and necessary discussion about the nature of “talent”.- The Economist

[Bolchover's] criticisms of the way top pay is handled crisply and with good use of data. Many of the hand grenades he throws hit their targets. He is withering about the clichéd term “talent”, which is used to justify excessive pay.- The Financial Times / Los Angeles Times

A great little book- Merryn Somerset Webb, Editor, MoneyWeek

A must read for anyone interested in the topic.- Lynda Gratton, Professor of Management Practice, London Business School

The answer – and the solution – [to excessive pay] lies in an excellent book by the business writer David Bolchover called Pay Check.- Johann Hari, GQ Magazine

A useful reminder for remuneration committees to start asking: how much is too much?- Management Today

Just learn from — and enjoy — the delicious demolition of corporate executive pay you’ll find in these pages - Institute for Policy Studies, Washington

The book strongly questions the case for multi-million pound City bonuses and pay deals in the face of the financial crisis and recession.- People Management

As David Bolchover points out in his new book, Pay Check, senior executives pay lip service to talent but rarely do anything concrete about it.- HR Magazine

This is a thoughtful, persuasive and well-written book.  It is a timely and powerful contribution to the debate about the corrosive effects of the banking bonus culture.  I commend Mr Bolchover’s work to anyone who cares about the future of capitalism.- Luke Johnson, Chairman Channel 4; Columnist Financial Times; Entrepreneur.

There is, in my view, no better writer on the modern workplace than David Bolchover. With this book he has done it again. He has asked one of the questions that really matter.- Daniel Finkelstein, The Times

Recent media coverage

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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.

Price £9.99 – Order at Amazon.com

Paul Lewis has spent most of the last 20 years travelling and working in Eastern Europe as a journalist, editor and business consultant. He was Bureau Chief for the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) in Vienna, covering political, economic and business developments in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

First published, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005; Second edition, Coptic, 2008

Praise for How The East Was Won

“…explains brilliantly how so much of post-communist Europe came right” – Robert Cottrell, East European Correspondent, The Economist

“a groundbreaking new book …an array of fresh and arresting perspectives that should cause everyone to rethink their prejudices about the entire globalization debate.” – Washington Times

“A must-read for anyone who wants to understand the complex but critically important roles played by multinational companies in Europe’s post-communist transition.” – Ben Slay, Director, Europe and CIS, United Nations Development Programme

“A most useful and original analysis.” – George C. Lodge, Harvard Business School

“An insightful new study on the former Communist bloc” – Strategy+Business

“…an important and almost poetic personal face to the story…clear and straight-forward, making it an easy read for anyone interested in the region, globalization or the plight of a people struggling after revolutionary change.” – Personal Finance

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.

About the author:

Vijai Maheshwari is an Indian-American writer who has really lived in post-Communist Eastern Europe since the early 1990s. He started a writers’ workshop in Prague, was editor-in-chief of Russian Playboy, a correspondent for Britain’s Financial Times and Moscow’s infamous alternative paper, the eXile. He played chess with 1996 Presidential candidate General Lebed before he was killed in a plane crash, and helped cult writer Victor Pelevin overcome substance abuse. He is the founder and editor of B-East, Eastern Europe’s provocative lifestyles and fashion glossy, and now lives in Kiev. Before arriving in Eastern Europe, he studied Physics under iconic scientist and Nobel laureate Richard Feynman.