Lucky Loser

**LONGLISTED FOR THE FT AND SHRODERS BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024**

Inheritance. Fraud. Deceit. Lucky Loser is an explosive investigation into the truth behind Trump’s wealth, drawing on decades’ worth of confidential tax information, business records and insider interviews.

Soon after announcing his first campaign for the U.S. presidency, Donald J. Trump declared life has ‘not been easy for me’. He spun a fable of how he turned a small loan from his father into a multi-billion-dollar empire, and argued this made him singularly qualified to lead the country.

Except none of it was true.

Born to a rich father, Trump received the equivalent of more than $500 million today.

The story of Trump’s finances is one of rises and falls, of squandering fortunes on money-losing businesses to be saved by blind luck. He tacks his name to buildings while taking out huge loans he’ll never repay. He obsesses over appearances while ignoring threats to the bottom line and mounting costly lawsuits. He tarnishes the value of the Trump name by allowing anyone with a big enough cheque to use it. He makes side deals to cut out the television producer who not only res­cued him from bankruptcy but casts him as a business guru – the image that carries him to the White House.

Here, for the first time, in a meticulous masterpiece of narrative reporting filled with scoops, is the definitive true accounting of Trump and his money - what he had, what he lost, and what he has left - and the final word on the myth of Trump, the self-made millionaire.