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About the Speaker

Gillian Tett explains how capital markets and politics created the European financial crisis. An award-winning journalist and preeminent authority on capital markets, she is widely credited with being the first to cover the credit crunch in the mainstream press and has won many prestigious journalism awards for her coverage of capital markets.

Beginning in 2004 — three years before anyone else — she began building a team at the Financial Times to cover capital markets, correctly anticipating the need to watch an industry growing uncommonly fast. By 2007, a year ahead of the curve, she began issuing her newsbreaking warnings of a looming financial crisis.
Gillian's current book is The Silo Effect: The Peril of Expertise and The Promise of Breaking Down Barriers. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Fool's Gold, the gripping tale of how a team of Wall Street bankers led by J.P. Morgan's CEO Jamie Dimon created the world of 'shadow banking,' and then lost control of their creation. Fool's Gold is a vital contribution to our understanding of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. She also wrote Saving the Sun, about Japan's financial collapse in the 1990s. She was Japan bureau chief for the FT during the 'lost decade'.

In recognition of her work, Gillian has won several awards, including the UK Speechwriters’ Guild Business Communicator of the Year 2012, the Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards 2009, British Business Journalist of the Year in 2008, and the Wincott prize in 2007. Gillian also received The British Academy President’s Medal 2011, which rewards service to the cause of the humanities and social sciences, specifically for her insightful journalism contributing to public understanding. Most recently, she was recognized as Columnist of the Year at the 2014 Press Awards.

Gillian Tett is Managing Editor (US) and columnist at the Financial Times. In her previous role at FT, she oversaw global coverage of the financial markets. Her twice-weekly column earned her recognition as Columnist of the Year at the 2014 Press Awards.

Gillian Tett has a PhD in social anthropology from Cambridge University, based on research conducted in the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s. She speaks French and Russian and has studied Japanese and Tajik.