Everything you need to cover the book.
Fact sheet, author biographies in three lengths, and quotable advance praise — free to use in coverage of How Bankers Think or the imprint. For interviews, review copies, or image files, email us with the subject line MEDIA.
Title
How Bankers Think
Subtitle
Inside Commercial Banking's Hidden Curriculum
Author
Michael Shang
Publisher
Highbank Press, Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand
Publication
First edition · 2026
Extent
370 pages · 8 chapters
Paperback ISBN
978-1-0672833-0-8
Hardcover ISBN
978-1-0672833-2-2
Ebook ISBN
978-1-0672833-1-5
Distribution
Worldwide via Amazon
Rights
World rights, handled in-house
Companion
Banking Judgment Lab (free case drills)
How Bankers Think: Inside Commercial Banking's Hidden Curriculum is a field guide to the worldview senior commercial bankers actually develop and use — the frameworks, dispositions, and disciplines behind durable credit judgement across cycles. It is a book about commercial banking — lending to businesses, and the credit judgement behind it — not investment banking.
Its argument: the technical content of banking is learnable in a year. The temperament takes longer — and is the actual subject of every interview, every credit committee, and every client meeting. Eight chapters each develop one named framework, from the Three Questions to the Three Translations.
Author biographies
Three lengths · use verbatim or cut from the top
- One line~26 words
- Michael Shang is a commercial banker in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand, and the author of How Bankers Think: Inside Commercial Banking's Hidden Curriculum (Highbank Press, 2026).
- Short~78 words
- Michael Shang is a commercial banker based in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand, and the author of How Bankers Think: Inside Commercial Banking's Hidden Curriculum (Highbank Press, 2026). He has spent sixteen 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 — spanning credit, structuring, and client coverage across mid-market and institutional borrowers, through several full credit cycles.
- Full~161 words
- Michael Shang is a commercial banker based in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand, and the author of How Bankers Think: Inside Commercial Banking's Hidden Curriculum (Highbank Press, 2026). He has spent sixteen 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 — spanning credit, structuring, and client coverage across mid-market and institutional borrowers, through several full credit cycles. How Bankers Think is a field guide to the worldview senior commercial bankers actually develop and use: the frameworks, dispositions, and disciplines behind durable credit judgement across cycles. He writes about how to read a borrower, how to price the risk actually taken, how to structure a facility a lender can live with, and how to act when the story changes. The book's companion project, Banking Judgment Lab, offers free interactive case drills that practise the questions it sets out. More at michaelshang.com.
"Michael Shang puts words around instincts that senior bankers carry but rarely articulate clearly."
— Bill Luo, Head of Finance, Fonterra Co-operative Group
"Michael Shang bridges accounting analysis and credit judgment with rare clarity… essential reading for finance professionals."
— Wayne Lee, Partner, BDO New Zealand
"Most borrowers only understand how their banker thinks once a facility is under stress. Michael Shang explains that thinking before things go wrong."
— Carlo Wan, Partner, Lane Neave
One address for everything: hello@highbankpress.com
Please include outlet, deadline, and a brief description of the piece. Cover and author images are supplied by email on request. The author is based in Auckland (michaelshang.com); the book's companion project is Banking Judgment Lab (bankingjudgmentlab.com).