I am a globally renowned award-winning freelance journalist (2010 Journalist of the Year - Investor Services Technology - Online/Wires State Street Press Awards). I specialise in international, institutional finance, writing about everything from mergers and acquisitions, private equity and hedge funds, to securities services and many other arcane topics, including property (commercial and residential), management and recruitment (both in the public and private sectors), and sport (football, athletics and skiing have all featured in my assignment diary at different times).
I am rare amongst financial journalists in that I have a banking background, having benefitted from the graduate training programme at the late, lamented Midland Bank International Division from 1979-84. I believe I might be unique amongst financial journalists in being a Fellow of the ifs School of Finance (FIFS).
I joined the Financial Times Group in October 1984 as deputy editor of the Financial Times Euromarket Letter, a specialist weekly publication which made its money from good old-fashioned investigative reporting, breaking news and views on syndicated loans, sovereign debt rescheduling and capital markets. I became executive editor in February 1988, and then editor of the Financial Times Mergers & Acquisitions International magazine in August 1989, just as the M&A market in general, and highly leveraged acquisitions in particular, were about to collapse as interest rates soared.
I wrote the daily international bonds column and other capital markets news stories and features in the Financial Times newspaper from October 1992 to January 1993 before finally cutting the salmon pink umbilical cord and going freelance. I continue to write fairly regularly for the FT and its various supplements, as well as for Financial News, Global Investor, Investor Services Journal and other titles. I have also written for Investment & Pensions Europe, Global Pensions, Private Equity News, Corporate Financier, New Business and Portfolio (property for investors). I am currently the editor of Investor Services Journal, a magazine on the international asset services market and related matters which appears in the umbrella title Fundamentals, alongside sister magazine Global Securities Lending.
Since going freelance I have successfully undertaken corporate writing and media training assignments for many top financial institutions and other corporates, including Union Bank of Switzerland, ING Barings, Baring Asset Management, Gartmore Investment Management, GAM, IBM, Citigroup, JP Morgan, Société Générale, ING Bank, State Street, The Bank of New York, REL Consultancy, Financial Dynamics, Broadgate and KPMG.
I am a member of the two Milton Keynes branches of Toastmasters International, a not-for-profit group which helps 'ordinary' people acquire vital communications and leadership skills. This has helped me develop my panel-chairing, conference-hosting and after-dinner speaking capabilities to a level I could never have previously contemplated (check out www.toastmasters.org to find a branch near you; it's the most rapidly acting, most cost-effective self-development programme on the planet!).
In my spare time in 2002 I wrote a history of my home town football club, Airdrieonians FC (Images of Sport: Airdrieonians Football Club, published by Tempus and available via Amazon or any good book-ordering service), a true labour of love. I have written several full-length novels, which are scabrous, irreverent and very funny, often laugh out loud funny, but I have yet to identify a traditional publisher who shares my sense of humour.
I am always on the lookout for new revenue-generating opportunities and try never to turn work down if I can possibly do it.
I can be contacted on 01908 234952 (for international calls, +44 1908 234952) or via email: [email protected].
