You knew the ratios. You had read the guides. And ten minutes in, you realised the senior banker across the table was not testing what you knew — she was testing how you thought.

"How do I get my money back, with interest, across cycles?" — the one question every senior banker carries into every file. Nobody teaches the thinking behind it, because the people who have it learned it the slow way, over fifteen or twenty years.

How Bankers Think writes it down. Drawing on sixteen years inside commercial banking across the Beijing and Auckland markets, Michael Shang lays out the hidden curriculum as eight working instruments of the lending desk: reading real demand through window-dressed cash flow, seeing the numbers behind the reported numbers, judging the industry before the borrower, spotting trouble before it spots you, and recognising the deals worth walking away from. The final chapter turns the lens inward — onto the work of translation between a business as it actually exists and the institutional process that has to read it.

Not a glossary. Not a cheat-sheet. A trained way of seeing — for the finance student who wants to think like the panel, the early-career banker building a first book of judgement, and the business owner who wants to know what the bank sees when it reads you.

"Michael Shang bridges accounting analysis and credit judgment with rare clarity… essential reading for finance professionals." — Wayne Lee, Partner, BDO New Zealand

"Michael Shang puts words around instincts that senior bankers carry but rarely articulate clearly." — Bill Luo, Head of Finance, Fonterra Co-operative Group

"A thoughtful and well-judged perspective on how bankers evaluate risk and opportunity. Michael Shang provides a clear and practical framework for understanding the considerations that sit behind formal credit processes and commercial lending decisions." — Jesse Fairley, Partner, Russell McVeagh

"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