In One Step Ahead, Timothy Spangler - author of the award-winning Forbes.com blog Law of the Market - provides a compelling account of how flexible and entrepreneurial investment firms can prosper in a volatile and rapidly changing financial world.

From the Occupy Movement to the purchase of well-known household brands by private equity firms, Spangler investigates how the structures of alternative investment funds enable them to adapt and react nimbly and effectively to today's shifting economic and financial landscape. Unpicking the debates and putting disputes in context, Spangler answers the difficult questions:

• Are new regulations sufficient to prevent another global financial crash?
• Have regulators got to grips with the institutional failings that allowed Bernie Madoff to fleece investors?
• Instead of a hedge fund problem or even a private equity problem do we simply have a public pension plan problem?

One Step Ahead is the essential, jargon-free guide to understanding how private equity and hedge funds drive financial markets and how they have become vital wealth creation vehicles for both private and public investors in the global economy.