An imprint for the books that should have been written by now.
Highbank Press is an independent publisher based in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. We publish a small number of serious books for working professionals — books written by experienced practitioners, for the people who will do the work next.
Working books, not academic ones.
Most professional knowledge is tacit. It lives in the judgement practitioners build over a career and almost none of it is written down. We publish books that try to make that judgement legible — not as theory, and not as memoir, but as a working curriculum the next generation can use on the desk, in the meeting, at the table.
Practitioners writing for practitioners.
Our authors have done the work. They are not coaches, consultants, or commentators — they are people who have spent fifteen or twenty years inside a craft, and who can now say something useful about it. We are deliberately small. We publish what we can edit carefully and stand behind, one title at a time.
By invitation only.
Highbank Press is not currently accepting unsolicited submissions. Future titles will be commissioned by invitation. If you are an experienced practitioner and think your work fits the imprint, a short note of introduction is always welcome.
Books give you the questions. The Lab gives you somewhere to practise asking them.
Each Highbank book is paired with a companion online project that turns the ideas into something a reader can work through. For How Bankers Think, that companion is Banking Judgment Lab — an interactive case drill for bankers and the people who train them.
Visit Banking Judgment Lab ↗Michael Shang
Michael Shang is a commercial banker based in Auckland and the author of How Bankers Think, the first title from Highbank Press.
He has spent fifteen years across commercial banking, including Bank of China in Beijing, the founding team of a Chinese bank's New Zealand branch, and senior roles in mainstream New Zealand commercial banking. His work has spanned credit, structuring, and client coverage across mid-market and institutional borrowers, through several full credit cycles.
He writes about how to read a borrower, how to price the risk you actually took, how to structure a facility you can live with, and how to act when the story changes.