Edward Chancellor is the author of Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation (Farrar Straus/Macmillan, 1999), a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. In 2005, he published Crunch-Time for Credit?(Harriman House), an analysis of the ongoing credit boom in the US and UK.  Edward has also edited two well-received investment books, Capital Account (Thomson Texere, 2004) and Capital Returns (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). His history of interest, The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest (Allen Lane, 2022) is the recipient of the 2023 Hayek Prize. His latest work with Jeremy Grantham, The Making of a Permabear (Grove Press),  was published earlier this year.

Edward read history at Cambridge and Oxford. Until 2014 he was a senior member of the  asset allocation team at GMO, the Boston investment firm. He is currently a columnist for Reuters Breakingviews, the financial commentary site, and has contributed to many publications, including  the Wall Street Journal, MoneyWeek, the New York Review of Books and Financial Times. In 2008, Edward received the George Polk Award for financial reporting for his article “Ponzi Nation” in Institutional Investor magazine.

Merryn Somerset Webb was founding editor of Moneyweek magazine in 2000. She remained at the magazine as Editor in Chief until late 2022. Merryn was also a Contributing Editor to and weekly columnist for the Financial Times until September 2022. She is currently Editor at Large. Bloomberg Wealth writing about wealth, investing and personal finance and hosts the 'Merryn Talks Money' podcast. Merryn is also an experienced non executive director and currently sits on the board of two listed investment trusts. 

Oliver Bullough is an award-winning author and journalist from Hay, who writes about financial crime, kleptocracy and money laundering, often with a connection to the former Soviet republics. His most recent book 'Butler to the World' was called "razor-sharp" by the FT; while 'Moneyland' was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize, and won the Welsh non-fiction book of the year prize. His journalism appears in the Guardian, the New York Times, the Sunday Times, in various magazines, and on the BBC.

Helen Thompson is Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Politics and International Studies at Cambridge University. Her most recent book Disorder: Hard Times in the 21stCentury was published by Oxford University Press on 24 February 2022 and was shortlisted for the 2022 Financial Times Business Book of the Year. She has written for, among other outlets, the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Sunday Times,  the Guardian, Foreign Affairs, Project Syndicate, the London Review of Books, New Statesman, UnHerd, Nature, and Prospect.

Russell Napier is author of The Solid Ground investment report for institutional investors and co-founder of the investment research portal ERIC- a business he now co-owns with D.C. Thomson.  Russell has worked in the investment business for 35 years and has been advising global institutional investors on asset allocation since 1995. Russell is author of the book Anatomy of The Bear: Lessons From Wall Street’s Four Great Bottoms ( in print for almost twenty years and ‘a cult classic’ according to the FT) and is founder and course director of The Practical History of Financial Markets course. The course has run since 2004 and is now available on campus at Edinburgh Business School, in a two and a half day in-person executive version in London and also online. 

He is a member of the investment advisory committees of three fund management companies, Cerno Capital, Kennox Asset Management and Bay Capital. He is part owner of both Cerno and Kennox. 

In 2014 Russell founded the charitable venture The Library of Mistakes a business and financial history library in Edinburgh that now has branches in India and Switzerland. Plans to open libraries in London, Singapore, Toronto and Mumbai are progressing. The Library of Mistakes hosts lectures which are live streamed and recorded and a podcast series was launched in 2022. The Library and the course are owned and operated by a Scottish registered charity called Didasko which donates its financial surpluses to promote financial education.  

Russell has degrees in law from Queen’s University Belfast and Magdalene College Cambridge. He is a Fellow of The CFA Society of the UK , an Honorary Fellow of the CISI and is an Honorary Professor at The University of Stirling and a Visiting Professor at Heriot Watt University. His second book – The Asian Financial Crisis 1995-1998: Birth of the Age of Debt- was published in July 2021. 

Alice Sherwood is the Co-Director of the Weekend of Mistakes. She is the author of the award-winning Authenticity: Reclaiming Reality in a Counterfeit Culture (HarperCollins 2022), which argues that although our counterfeit culture is shaped by the most powerful forces of economics, evolution, and technology, we can still come together to reclaim reality. Currently a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at The Policy Institute at King’s College London, she has been a director of an open-source intelligence company, worked as a management consultant for Accenture, in retail strategy consultancy and private equity, and for the BBC in education and multimedia. She has under-graduate degrees in philosophy and in chemistry, an MBA from INSEAD, and an MA in literary criticism and narrative non-fiction. She is a trustee of the Hay Castle Trust, chair of the Beit Scientific Fellowship at Imperial Colleget, chair of the Rising Tide women’s network, and lives in London and Wales. Authenticity is Alice’s first book. It won a Royal Society of Literature Giles St Aubyn Award for Non-Fiction.

Charles Hecker is the author of the 2024 book Zero Sum: The Arc of International Business in Russia, published in the UK by Hurst Publishers and in the US by Oxford University Press.

Prior to writing Zero Sum, Charles was a partner at Control Risks, the international, specialist risk consultancy. For eight years, Charles was the managing partner of the firm’s Moscow office. He was later a co-head of Control Risks’ geopolitical risk consulting practice.

Prior to working at Control Risks, Charles was a journalist in Russia for The Moscow Times and in Florida for The Miami Herald. Charles has a BA in Russian and Soviet Studies from the University of Pennsylvania and an MA from the Russian Research Center (now the Davis Center) at Harvard University.

David Clarke CFA is CEO of Didasko Education Company, the charity behind the Library of Mistakes, Practical History of Financial Markets courses, Future Asset and Leavers’ Money Skills.

After studying philosophy at Trinity College Dublin, he joined the Bloomberg News team in 2000, reporting on Europe’s burgeoning investment management industry. Later posts saw him as editor-at-large for EMEA news sales and editor for bonds and foreign exchange.

After completing his CFA exams he focused on communications for the investment industry, working for a number of well-known investment and wealth management houses. He has also run marketing teams in the wider financial information sector.

A keen supporter of the finance industry and the good that it can do, he has been involved for many years in encouraging the development of Scotland’s investment sector and its international links, particularly with Ireland, and was until recently chairman of the CFA society in Scotland.

He joined Didasko Education in 2022 as its first CEO, overseeing its expanded portfolio of activities in events and media., increased commercial operations and also its plans to develop more libraries around the world.

He is an accomplished musician, and worked in entertainment in his early 20s. He is also a strong supporter of international cooperation and is chairman of the European Movement in Scotland and a board member of European Movement UK.

Dr Felix Martin (www.felixmartin.org) is an economist, investor, and highly acclaimed author.

His twenty-five year career in international finance has ranged from sovereign lending and post-conflict reconstruction at the World Bank to designing, launching, and managing a sequence of global investment funds at publicly-listed asset managers, leading private firms, and his own independent boutique. Today, he advises global investors, governments, and corporate leaders on how to navigate complex financial and political risks using an approach that makes economics engaging and digestible.

Felix’s 2013 book Money: the Unauthorised Biography has been published in fifteen countries and ten languages, was a Financial Times Economics Book of the Year, and was called “compulsively readable” by the New York Times. It must also (surely...) be the only book to have been both cited by the US Supreme Court and endorsed by the lead singer of glam rock legends Kiss. He is a columnist for Reuters Breakingviews.

Ed Richards is a co-founder of Flint Global Ltd. Flint works with companies and other organisationswho seek to navigate successful developments in the policy, political and regulatory arenas. The company works globally from six offices across Europe and the Asia Pacific region. Ed works across a broad range of sectors including digital/tech and other network industries, as well as on general policy, competition, and regulatory issues.

Before co-founding Flint, Ed spent more than eight years as the Chief Executive of Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator. Earlier in his career Ed worked as an adviser to the UK Prime Minister in 10 Downing Street covering a wide range of domestic policy areas and helping to coordinate the introduction of significant legislation. Prior to this, he led the Corporate Strategy team at the BBC during the development of digital technology and services.

In addition to his position as Founding Partner at Flint, Ed is also Chair of Nesta, the social innovation charity and Chair of the Behavioural Insights Team (the Nudge Unit).

Ilias Alami is an Assistant Professor in the Political Economy of Development at the University of Cambridge, where he writes about state capitalism, geopolitics, the green transition, and global finance. He is also the Director of the PhD programme in Development Studies. Prior to joining Cambridge, he held research and teaching positions at Uppsala University, Maastricht University, and Manchester University, and visiting positions at the University of Sydney, Sciences Po Paris, the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Sao Paulo, and the University of Johannesburg. He is the author of Money Power and Financial Capital in Emerging Markets: Facing the Liquidity Tsunami (Routledge, 2019) and co-author of The Spectre of State Capitalism (Oxford University Press, 2024). Ilias is a fellow of the Transition Security Project, a research associate at the Second Cold War Observatory, and a member of Common Wealth's Green Planning Commission.

Izabella Kaminska is the founder and editor of The Blind Spot, a new media venture that aims to shine a light on stories being missed by the wider journalistic pack. The site focuses on finance, market, and media news in both short and long form. It hopes to deliver a healthy mix of analysis and opinion-led commentary, supported by aggregation, news reporting and deep dives.

In February 2023, she also became Politico Europe’s senior finance editor, overseeing the growth of Politico’s financial coverage on a part-time basis, in a deal that secured a special licensing agreement for the distribution of Politico content on The Blind Spot. She continues to author her weekly newsletter at The Blind Spot.

Izabella is an alumnus of the Financial Times, where she spent 13 years in reporting roles, most recently as the editor of FT Alphaville, the Financial Times’s award-winning markets and finance blog. Izabella was also an FT columnist and opinion writer focused on tech, finance, and markets. She has also written as a freelancer for Bloomberg, Boat International, and Public News.

Izabella started her journalistic career in 2001 as a junior reporter for the English-language newspaper the Warsaw Business Journal. She later spent time in the former Soviet Union at the Caspian Business News, which took her to Azerbaijan and Georgia. In 2003 she reported as a freelancer from Kabul, Afghanistan, before joining BP as an Associate Editor of the company’s internal magazine Horizon in 2004.

After completing the 2005 Reuters graduate trainee program, Izabella joined Platts to focus on the reporting of European natural gas markets. She then went on to become a senior producer at CNBC in London, producing the channel’s flagship program Squawk Box. 

With The Blind Spot Izabella is initiating a two-part plan to try to reconfigure how journalistic information is organized on the Internet. 

Jesse Norman is the MP for Hereford and South Herefordshire, and an academic and writer. He is also a founder and now the Chair of NMITE, Herefordshire's new specialist technical university.

Among his ministerial roles, Jesse has served as Paymaster General and Financial Secretary to the Treasury, where he managed the Furlough Scheme during the pandemic. He is now Shadow Leader of the House of Commons. Otherwise, he is a former Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and the author of works on Edmund Burke and Adam Smith, and a historical novel, The Winding Stair. 

Katie Martin is a columnist and member of the FT's editorial board. She writes the weekly Long View column on market trends as well as other opinion pieces, and appears weekly on the Unhedged podcast. Previously, she spent four years as the FT's markets editor, and also several years on the FT's live news service. Prior to joining the FT in 2015, she spent 11 years at the Dow Jones/Wall St Journal group, also covering markets."

The Rev’d. Dr. Lyndon Drake is a Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, following on from a DPhil in Theology from Oxford (2023) on economics and writing in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, and a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from York (2005). He is the operational lead for the Oxford Collaboration on Theology and Artificial Intelligence. Until 2024, he served as the Māori Anglican Archdeacon of Tāmaki Makaurau in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Lyndon also has degrees in science and commerce (Auckland) and two previous degrees in theology (Oxford), along with peer-reviewed publications in science and theology. Until 2010, Lyndon was a Vice President at Barclays Capital, trading interest-rate products. Since then, he has served in church ministry, as well as teaching theology and holding other leadership roles, including as chair of Te Whare Ruruhau o Meri Trust Board (a charity working to reduce family harm and sexual violence).

Nick Butler is an energy economist and Visiting Professor in the Policy Institute at Kings College London.  He was Group Vice President for Strategy and Policy at BP from 2002 to 2007 and subsequent senior policy adviser to Prime Minister Gordon Brown.   

Paul Greatbatch was a Partner & Portfolio Manager at Genesis Investment Management from 1994-2013, one the oldest specialist managers operating in Emerging Markets on behalf of large institutional clients

Anja Shortland is a Professor in Political Economy at King’s College London. She studied Engineering Science at Oxford and for her MSc in Political Economy and PhD in International Relations at LSE. Anja specialises in institutional economics and the economics of crime. She is fascinated by private ordering in the world’s trickiest markets: hostages, hijacked ships, stolen art, ransomware and protection for criminalised minorities. Her research focuses on trades between legal and illegal enterprises and mafia and insurance governance in criminal markets.

Anja latest book: We Know Can Pay A Million: Inside the Dark Economy of Hacking and Ransomware will be released by Profile Books in April 2026.

Rachel Jenkins OBE is  a psychiatrist, epidemiologist and mental health policy maker. She is Emeritus  Professor of Epidemiology and International Mental Health Policy at Kings College London  and  formerly  Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre (1997-2012). She trained in Medicine at Girton College, Cambridge, and then in Psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital and epidemiological research at the Institute of Psychiatry before becoming Consultant Psychiatrist and Senior Lecturer, first at the Maudsley Hospital and Institute of Psychiatry and then  at St Bartholomew’s Hospital  . She was then recruited into the Senior Civil Service as Principal Medial Officer for mental health policy 1987-1996.   She has provided policy support, research   and training in the UK, Africa, the Middle East and Asia .

She initiated  the national  mental health  survey programme  in the UK in 1992, which  has provided much useful information both about the prevalence, causes and consequences of mental disorders, including the relationship with income and debt, and about  the dimensions of happiness and wellbeing.  She led the mental health component of the Chief Scientist’s Foresight report of Mental Capital and Wellbeing 2008. 

She returned to live in her native Herefordshire in 2011, and is active in local biodiversity projects . She produced the exhibition about the River Wye, now on display in Hay Church.

Ray Perman was a financial journalist for over 30 years on newspapers including the Financial Times and The Times. He is the author of four books, including The Rise & Fall of the City of Money, a financial history of Edinburgh, and HUBRIS, an account of the collapse of HBOS in 2009. His latest work is a biography of the Enlightenment geologist and businessman James Hutton. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and chair of court at the University of St Andrews.

Russell Jones has been a professional macroeconomist for some forty years. Over the course of his long career, he has at different times been domiciled in London, Tokyo, Abu Dhabi, and Sydney, and applied his skills to all the major asset classes. He has worked for a number of major financial institutions, been a partner at one of Britain's foremost economic consultancies, and provided advice not just to leading asset managers, but also to several governments and central banks. He has also published a number of books. 

Tamim Bayoumi is a Visiting Professor at King’s College London working on macroeconomics and international finance. After graduating from Cambridge and Stanford Universities, he had a long and varied career at the IMF, including overseeing work on the World Economic Outlook and the United States. He is also head of author of an FT economics book of the year on the origins of the 2009 North Atlantic financial crisis, Unfinished Business.

Theodora Zemek has had a 40 year career in the City, largely in fixed income investment. She has managed portfolios for central banks, insurance and pensions companies and retail investors. She was formerly a Non Exec for BlackRock Fund Managers

Non Executive Director for Blackrock Fund Managers (London), EFG Asset Management and Capital Gearing Investment Trust.

Prior to her retirement, she was Global Head of Fixed Income for Axa Investment Managers, responsible for Euros 385 billion in assets.. She established the fixed income divisions of M and G Investment Management (1992) and New Star Asset Management (2001), having launched the first UK Corporate Bond unit trust and the first UK High Yield Corporate Bond Fund.

Theo received her PhD in History from Cambridge in 1985, with a thesis on the the influence of the Scottish Enlightenment (Smith and Ferguson) in France.

Tom Elliott is an investment consultant, helping multi-asset management companies with their asset allocation decisions. Tom previously worked for the Mattioli Woods Group as a Senior Strategist, and at JP Morgan Asset Management in London for 18 years, leaving at Executive Director level. Before that he worked for four years as a company analyst, for stockbrokers Greig Middleton and Co. 

 Tom is also a visiting lecturer at King’s College (London University), in the department of political economy. He has a Master’s degree in Economic History from the London School of Economics, and a degree in History from the University of Sussex.