Chameleon

Cocky Australian financier Jon Phillips, head of proprietary bond trading at the Bank of Manhattan in New York City, has hatched a bold plan to corner the U.S. government bond market by buying $15 billion worth of bonds. He then intends to run up their value by starting a false rumor that a major U.S. company is in legal trouble, whereupon he will sell all for huge profit. To pull off this scheme he uses money from a Russian mobster who's eager to launder his own ill-gotten gains. The fact that what he's doing is illegal doesn't bother Jon, and it's only after, inevitably, he comes a cropper that he realizes he's in serious trouble. The bank fires him, and the Russian is out for revenge, but Jon remains fairly nonplussed until a series of deaths force him to flee Manhattan. Hedge fund partner Hains's strong suit is insider financial info, but the basic plot, characters and writing are all formulaic. There's a continuing, valiant attempt to heat up the action with a variety of lurid sexual encounters, but even this effort can't lift what's run-of-the-mill into out-of-the-ordinary.