The Oligarchs’ Grip

Goody Business Book Awards Finalist 2023
Shortlisted in the International Business Book category at the Business Book Awards in partnership with Pathway Group 2024

The first ever guide to oligarchs as a global and historical phenomenon.

Today, more than twenty oligarchs serve as heads of state or government in countries such as Russia, South Africa, Lebanon, and El Salvador. Many have a net worth in excess of $1 billion, and they all – whether directly or indirectly – impact our daily lives.

Who are they and how have they dominated our world? What lessons can we learn from them, and what might the future hold?

In The Oligarchs’ Grip: Fusing Wealth and Power, entrepreneurship professor David Lingelbach and oligarch researcher Valentina Rodríguez Guerra draw upon more than 25 years of research (including conversations with Vladimir Putin and other oligarchs), 16 case studies, and dozens of historical examples to develop the first-ever model revealing the strategies oligarchs employ to fuse wealth and power, and transition between the two. This model gives insight into how oligarchs use multiple control mechanisms to exploit an increasingly uncertain world.

The Oligarchs’ Grip is a fascinating read for economists, political scientists, business academics, policymakers, businesspeople and anyone interested in oligarchs and the wealth and power they wield on the politico-economic scene today.

Book talk with both authors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iAwhJjN3hk

• An original contribution to our understanding of oligarchs by showing that their multiple control mechanisms (wealth and power) allow them to better exploit an increasingly uncertain world
• A model showing how they gain and fuse wealth and power

David Lingelbach is professor of entrepreneurship at the Merrick School of Business, The University of Baltimore. He was educated at MIT, London School of Economics and Political Science, and University of Exeter, from which he received a Ph.D. Prior to becoming an academic, David served in senior roles in finance and international development, including as CEO of Bank of America’s businesses in the former Soviet Union. He has been a Fulbright Scholar (Myanmar/Burma, 2018-19) and Fulbright Specialist (Colombia, 2021) and has been nominated twice for an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship.

Valentina Rodríguez Guerra is an author, oligarch researcher, and graduate student in business administration, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas, Universidad Nacional de Colombia. She has received awards for her work from NASA and the Colombian Ministry of Education.

Together, they are regular opinion contributors to The Hill on Vladimir Putin and oligarchs.

"Oligarchs are, arguably, the main political actors of our era. Any attempt to try and understand who they are, what they are doing, and how they are doing it, is a worthy contribution to public debate ... The Oligarchs‘ Grip offers extraordinary intellectual value. This book provides a much-needed correction to so much academic literature, but even more so to popular culture and journalism." - David Siegel, PhD, Assistant Professor, St. Joseph’s University, Brooklyn, New York

"Since time immemorial, oligarchs have shaped how societies function … and planted the seeds of how they collapse. Given this, as human civilisation faces its latest crises, from environmental degradation and artificial intelligence, this book is a timely one. The portraits of oligarchs and analysis of the bases of their power helps readers to understand more fully how oligarchic power and money interact and nurture each other. No society should trust to luck that 'its' oligarchs are benign. Many are not. By explaining how oligarchs work, this book helps citizens understand how they may be made more accountable for the societies they make, and sometimes, disastrously, unmake." - Dr. Aidan McQuade, author of Ethical Leadership