Business and Finance

I began my career by qualifying as a registered representative with the New York Stock Exchange, and subsequently trained as an investment banker in the City. I started writing about business and finance first as a City reporter for the Financial Times and then as an investigative features writer for the FT in the early 1980s (winning a commendation in the British Press Awards in 1982). Three and a half years as an associate with McKinsey & Co probably taught me more about business than any business school could ever have done - and I later worked for The Economist as its US business correspondent.

One of the most intriguing stories that I wrote about as a features writer at the FT concerned the privatisation of British Airways in the 1980s. At the heart of the story was a high-stakes poker game between BA (and a clutch of other major flag carriers) and the entrepreneurial Freddie Laker, pioneer of the cut-price airline sector and founder of the Laker Skytrain. Given clearance by the Thatcher government to go ahead with its own privatisation, BA made an awkward discovery: a huge lawsuit lodged by Laker, blaming BA for the recent collapse of his Skytrain operation, was effectively blocking the runway. Laker gambled that BA would have to pay him off royally in order to proceed. BA struggled for a year to persuade Laker that he had no case and should take a minimal pay-off. The result was a remarkable episode in the history of the airline industry. I described it in a book, Struggle for Take-Off, The Story of British Airways, that was published by Coronet Books in 1986.

I have taken a keen interest in company-history projects over more than 20 years. In 2007 and again in 2008, I was one of three judges for the annual Wadsworth Prize for business history, awarded by the Business Archives Council of the UK.