The Finance Curse comes to the Frontline Club

November 2, 2026

A new documentary asks whether a country can have too much finance. London, of all places, should be watching.

At a glance: Thursday 12 November 2026. Doors 6pm, screening 7pm. Frontline Club, Paddington, London. Organised by the Frontline Club. Tickets on Eventbrite.

We are told the City is the goose that lays the golden eggs. Politicians say it, the financial pages repeat it, and most of us nod along. On Thursday 12 November a documentary called The Finance Curse puts that idea on screen and asks what happens if the evidence points the other way.

The event is billed as the film's London launch screening, followed by a Q&A at the Frontline Club in Paddington. An earlier public screening was announced at Sands Films in September. The organisers describe the film as following "the global fight to stop financiers and far-right billionaires from capturing our economies and corrupting our democracies", with stories ranging from care workers challenging private equity owners to whistleblowers following money offshore. The film comes from John Christensen, a former economic adviser to Jersey who co-founded the Tax Justice Network. Leo Hyde is identified as its director. Christensen is expected to attend; publicity for the film says he will attend screenings, although the Frontline Club's published panel lists three other speakers.

Where the idea comes from

The "finance curse" is a phrase Christensen developed with the writer Nicholas Shaxson. Shaxson has written that in the 1990s, as Jersey's economic adviser, Christensen came to believe the island's large financial sector was making a small minority very rich while many islanders struggled, and that he saw a similar pattern in Britain. The two began studying it together in 2007. Their argument borrows from the resource curse, the paradox that oil or mineral wealth can leave a country poorer: when finance grows too big, it pulls talent, political attention and capital away from everything else. Shaxson's 2018 Guardian Long Read sets out the case for anyone who wants it in full.

Shaxson developed it in his 2018 book The Finance Curse: How Global Finance Is Making Us All Poorer, published by The Bodley Head and picked as a Financial Times book of the year. The film takes that argument off the page and into the lives of the people it touches.

Why it matters here

London is one of the world's great financial centres, and many of the services the offshore world relies on are found here: lawyers, trust companies, property, paperwork. None of that is improper in itself. But anyone who has followed the shell companies and secrecy jurisdictions I write about in these pages will recognise the terrain. The question the film poses is a simple one for this city. If finance creates so much wealth, why do so many people outside it feel poorer?

Who is on the panel

The Eventbrite listing names three speakers:

• Hettie O'Brien, who writes for the Guardian's First Edition newsletter and the Guardian Long Read, and is the author of The Asset Class.
• Ann Pettifor, political economist, author and public speaker on money, monetary policy and the UK economy.
• Daniel Bertossa, who leads Public Services International, which brings together more than 700 unions representing some 30 million workers, and sits on the steering committee of ICRICT.

How to go

The Finance Curse: Screening + Q&A, organised by the Frontline Club, Thursday 12 November 2026, Frontline Club, 13 Norfolk Place, London W2 1QJ. Doors open at 6pm and the screening starts at 7pm. Tickets are on Eventbrite and were listed at £5.94 to £16.63 at the time of writing, with refunds up to 7 days before the event. Eventbrite lists the event as running from 7pm to 8.30pm; the film's press release suggests the Q&A and open discussion in the bar are likely to run to about 9.30pm.

I was invited by Naomi Fowler of the Tax Justice Network, who produces The Taxcast podcast. I hope to be there, notebook in hand. If you go, come and say hello.

This is a living page and will be updated if the organisers publish more details.