Contributions of the book On 20 September 2001, in a speech to a Joint Session of Congress, President George W. Bush declared: ‘Americans are asking: How will we fight and win this war? We will direct every resource at our command . . . every financial influence . . . to the disruption and to the defeat of the global terror network.’ With this speech, President Bush aimed to securitize the financial sector by publicly stating, to overwhelming Congressional and public appeal, that finance was to be used as an explicit means in the war on terror. The banking sector was from now on expected to incorporate anti-money laundering (AML) as a security issue into its organization and its day-to-day activities. In this way, there was a push for increased securitization of for-profit actor activities (Mitsilegas 2003; Bergström et al. 2011). This volume takes September 2011 as its start point, when the financial sector became an explicit object of securitization. We ask what happens next. Our focus is on the daily practices of securitization, the emergence of a public security domain and the democratic implications of changing borders between the public and private actors. We pose the following questions: How is securitization manifested in the daily work with financial transactions and the handling of clients? How has the political aim to securitize the financial sector resonated with risk management in the private sector? We are interested in the new power dynamics between the public and private sectors as a result of the securitization of the financial sector. In what ways do the private actors make decisions that were formerly the prerogative of the public actors? We argue that the securitization of the financial sector has entailed the emergence of a new public security domain cutting across the classic public-private divide (Weintraub 1997). The democratic implications of the securitization of the financial market and the creation of a public security domain are therefore central issues for the volume. How can the private actors be held accountable for the decisions they make? The analysis in this volume is multidisciplinary and combines concepts and theories from the literature on securitization, the public-private divide and business/management. It contributes to a deeper understanding of how the power relationships have changed between the public and the private sectors after 9/11.