Serious Money Characters

Scilla Todd

Scilla Todd, a London International Financial Futures Exchange (LIFFE) dealer, a job that is out of keeping with her sex and her upbringing. An initially caring but also highly ambitious young woman, she undertakes a quest to find Jake’s murderer that ends in her corruption; she becomes greedy, amoral, and cunning. She is a victim of a paternalistic and capitalistic British society in which gender and class lines are being challenged in ways that promise a future that is even bleaker, devoid of any sense of morality or responsibility toward others. She gives up on finding Jake’s killer, cuts herself in on his action, and is named as Wall Street’s rising star by Business Week.

Jake Todd

Jake Todd, Scilla’s brother and a commercial paper dealer who has the whistle blown on him for dealing in insider information in the stock market. He is killed before he has a chance to talk, and almost every character in the play, including his father, has sufficient motive to be under suspicion. A public-school boy, he is typical of the new generation of young Brits who are challenging the old class system and succeeding. He bases his power on money and threats.

Greville Todd

Greville Todd, Scilla and Jake’s father and a stockbroker. Part of the English “good old boy” system, he is a pompous hypocrite who is concerned with appearances and with protecting his class and his female family members from the new breed of traders. He sells out to these very people, however, to obtain more money. Consequently, he is the only trader sacrificed by the Tories to avert a further scandal.

Zac Zackerman

Zac Zackerman, a brash Jewish banker from New York who supplies various methods of creative financing so that companies can succeed in hostile takeovers. Representing everything that the British establishment hates, he is nevertheless invited to hunts and homes because the upper class is in such need of money that it will tolerate those who can provide it.