In 1989, following the fall of the Berlin Wall as Communism collapsed and for the first time, the businesses of eastern Europe came face-to-face with the other side – the City of London and Wall Street. Here is what happened next. Frontier is unauthorised exciting story of a period of booming western interest in the eastern world’s emerging economies. Frontier chronicles 30-year of rollercoaster of culture shocks, big personalities, rag-to-riches fortunes and a lot of accidents – a saga of daring ventures at the edge of capitalism, the warriors who braved  the emerging markets battlefield and the re-making of a continent. And of what can we do wrong, all too often, when East meets West.

Young delves into the financial follies and mismatched expectations of westerners as they tried to embrace the different and complex economies, societies and cultures of the East, from post-Soviet Oligarchs to former communist tycoons. Western investors armed with spreadsheets, MBAs and overconfidence- stumbled into environments where local realities defied their understanding of economic systems.

Frontier focuses on how shifting economic trends and geopolitics shaped lives and nations. It is also important account of why assumptions about how free markets and democracy operate in the west cannot be simply channelled elsewhere.

 Frontier: An Emerging Markets Story by Jonathan Young  Triskleion Books £30