Childhood friends, Hugo and Laura, meet again as adults amid the merger of Laura's company with a larger rival that has engaged a rapacious financier for the project. In addition to exploiting the merger for himself, the financier, as a master of financial manipulation, encourages others unknowingly to assist him in his pursuit of millions. He harbours the secret intention of seizing the redevelopment site value and lusts after Laura. Big business seeks to overwhelm the weak as the power of high finance poses dilemmas for the several lovers in the story; but the resolution of their difficulties brings a new maturity to all participants.