Finance at Work

Valérie Boussard is Professor of Sociology and Head of the Department of Sociology at the Paris Nanterre University, France. Her works are focused on the managerialisation and financialisation of contemporary firms through the analysis of professional and occupational groups which take part in such dynamics.

Contents

List of Figures

List of Tables

Notes on Contributors

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Financiers at work, financialisation on the march

Valérie Boussard

PART I The boundaries of finance: Exclusionary process, social closure and inner regulation

Introduction: Interrogating financialization as an analytic

Karen Ho

Chapter 1 Let’s make the company a bunch of figures: Professional representations in mergers and acquisitions firms

Valérie Boussard and Marie-Anne Dujarier

Chapter 2 Matching the market: Calibration and the working practices of quants

Taylor Spears

Chapter 3 Buying it: Financialisation through socialisation

Natascha van der Zwan

Chapter 4 Financial logic and bankers’ institutional entrepreneurship: The politics of the "zombies" debate in bankruptcy proceedings at the Commercial Court of Paris (2000–2005)

Emmanuel Lazega, Lise Mounier and Sylvan Lemaire

PART II

Passing through boundaries: Financiers as intermediaries in conversion to financial logics

Introduction: Financialising economic activities

Donald MacKenzie

Chapter 5 The financialization of the private wealth of farmers: Is it the work of the banks?

Gilles Laferté and Abdoul Diallo

Chapter 6 Financial backlash: When local bankers face social protest

Quentin Ravelli

Chapter 7 The assetisation of South African farmland: The role of finance and brokers

Antoine Ducastel and Ward Anseeuw

PART III

Crossing boundaries: Individual careers as vehicles for financialisation

Introduction: The financialisation of finance: The transformation of the French financial elite

Sabine Montagne

Chapter 8 The second financialisation in France, or how executives and directors with unchanged financial careers promoted a new conception of control

Pierre François and Claire Lemercier

Chapter 9 Financialisation through the trajectories of business school graduates in France

Valérie Boussard and Simon Paye

Chapter 10 "I didn’t leave financial journalism, I left classical journalism": Careers and commitments of French financial journalists at the time of financialisation

Antoine Machut

PART IV

Internal boundaries: Diversity, segmentation, stratification within financial occupations

Introduction: Is sociology of finance a general sociology?

Olivier Godechot

Chapter 11 Early careers in portfolio and wealth management: The roles of class, race and gender in occupational segmentations

Stéphanie Mignot-Gérard, Constance Perrin-Joly, François Sarfati and Nadège Vezinat

Chapter 12 Managing fortunes and privacy: Professional rhetoric and boundaries within wealth management

Camille Herlin-Giret

Chapter 13 The duality of the LBO field

Fabien Foureault

References

Index