Allen Lane wins eight-way auction for Vanessa Ogle’s 'gripping history’ of tax havens 

Ben Sinyor, commissioning editor at Penguin Press, has bought UK and Commonwealth rights to Havens: A Global History in the Shadows by historian Vanessa Ogle in a heated eight-way auction from Emma Leong at Janklow & Nesbit.  

Ibrahim Ahmad at Viking acquired North American rights at auction from Mel Flashman. Allen Lane in the UK will publish the book in hardback in spring 2027. 

In Havens, Ogle reveals the hidden machinations of the offshore economy, the bankers, officials and spies who built it. 

Ogle is a historian at Yale University. Her first book, The Global Transformation of Time, won the American Historical Association’s George Louis Beer Prize. Research for Havens has taken her to 31 archives in 10 countries over the past seven years.

Ogle said: “Offshore tax havens are behind so many core features of today’s global economy and affect all of us. It was tremendously exciting to unearth the 130-year history of those who created offshore capitalism, why they did so, and who lost out, especially because many of those who benefit from this history would prefer for it to remain in the shadows.” 

Sinyor said: “Havens is a masterclass in detective work and a gripping history of capitalism, one with the hidden trillions filled in. In showing how tax havens reshaped the world order and economy – driving globalisation and inequality, depleting public resources and deforming politics – it gives us the tools to understand many of the defining issues of our time. It will galvanise readers everywhere.”