There is an urgent need for political economy analysis that theorises the role of finance in emerging capitalist countries. Thomas Marois's book is therefore an especially valuable – and accessible – contribution to the literature. Marois's thesis is that the current phase of accumulation, which he refers to as ‘emerging finance capitalism’, marks ‘the fusion of the interests of domestic and foreign financial capital in the state apparatus as the institutionalized priorities and overarching social logic guiding the actions of state managers and government elites’ (p. 10).

Four premises guide the analysis. Both states and banks are understood as social relations. Banks bring together external relations with other firms, the state and labour, and internal relations between the owners of money capital and bank labour. The third premise is that labour is vital to emerging finance capitalism. This points to Marois's careful attention to the role of labour in understanding bank profitability and operational orientation, something which is all too often overlooked. Finally, crises play a critical role in emerging finance capitalism. The resolution of crisis provides the rationale for the changes that have privileged the power of financial capital.

Marois next moves quickly and competently through the period of post-war capitalist development. This provides sound historical foundations for the more detailed analysis which follows: firstly, a chapter on the period of bank nationalisation and subsequent re-privatisation from 1982 to 1994; and then a further chapter on the more recent period covering the tequila crisis, NAFTA and the extranjerización of the banking system. Unlike structuralist accounts which have wrestled with whether or not to depict the actions of a particular government as developmentalist or neoliberal, Marois places each policy agenda within the constraints imposed by the prevailing relations of production and the state of Mexico's integration into the world market.

Along the way, a number of sacred cows in orthodox accounts of the causes of Mexico's crises are slain. These include the broadly accepted wisdom that the financial crisis of 1994–5 was the result of weak state regulation and political failures. A number of commentators have argued that the management of the re-privatisation process of Mexico's banks led to prices being paid for the banks in 1991–2 that were too high. This allegedly was the reason for the period of ‘super-competition’ which followed, driving up non-performing loan ratios. Marois disputes this, arguing that the prices paid were more a symptom of neoliberal competitive imperatives than a causal explanation of the subsequent crisis. These imperatives included the structural pressure of state debt requiring that revenues from the sale be maximised, and the tacit understanding that the bidders were ‘buying into a new strategy of accumulation in which state authorities had practically ensured high returns’ (p. 91).

A notable – and undoubtedly controversial – contribution of the book comes from Marois turning his analysis on sacred cows of the heterodox variety. Against the weight of opinion, Marois contends that in the current era there is little difference between either public and private or domestic and foreign ownership of banks. This will be a bitter pill to swallow for some on the left in Mexico. Neoliberal restructuring, says Marois, compels all banks, regardless of ownership, to operate without regard for national development. Indeed, the period of bank nationalisation in Mexico paved the way for liberalisation by eliminating the need for the government to negotiate with the bankers over subsequent liberalisation processes. However, if we look at the examples of countries such as Brazil which host much more robust national development banks, it is not clear that there is no regard for national development. Indeed, in Marois's comparison of the Turkish and Mexican experiences, he highlights the role played by national development banks in Turkey in both mitigating crisis and counteracting uneven development.

On the issue of which flag a bank operates under, Marois takes a strong view that there is little to differentiate between the strategies of large Mexican and large foreign banks. He argues that both are equally neoliberal in their quest to drive down labour costs and exploit state financial support. But while there may be similarity in the drive to profitability, perhaps there is still room to differentiate how those profits are generated. The Unión de Instituciones Financieras Mexicanas (Union of Mexican Financial Institutions, UNIFIM) argued in a 2010 report entitled ‘Bancos mexicanos y extranjeros, cartera de préstamos y estructura de la rentabilidad antes y después de la crisis económica 2003–2010’ (see http://tinyurl.com/ac88vvf) that Mexican-owned banks are less profitable as a result of greater lending to more ‘expensive’ customers (read: SMEs) and earning less from the financialised world of commissions and fees. Clearly more meticulous empirical work, rejecting simplistic cross-country regressions of the World Bank type, is needed on the question of ownership.

Whether or not the reader concurs with Marois on these points is probably less important than that such debate is generated. The book marks a vital step in the project to integrate a Marxian theory of state–society relations into our understanding of the role of finance in emerging capitalist countries. For this reason it deserves to be read much more widely than simply by those with an interest in banking in Mexico and Turkey.