BIOGRAPHY

Ian FraserIan Fraser is an award-winning journalist, commentator and broadcaster who writes about business, finance, politics and economics. He has written for titles including The Economist, Financial Times, The Sunday Times, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, Independent on Sunday, the Herald, Sunday Herald, BBC News, Thomson Reuters, Dow Jones, Accountancy, CA Magazine and Citywire.

His book, Shredded: Inside RBS, The Bank That Broke Britain, published in June 2014, explores how and why RBS, the world’s largest company by assets at the time of its collapse, became the world’s most expensive bank to bail out. The book — based on extensive interviews with more than 120 current and former RBS insiders, advisers, politicians, and others — was longlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year and has received positive reviews including from FT chief economics correspondent Martin Wolf.

Since March 2009, Ian has worked on programmes about the global financial crisis and its aftermath for the BBC. These have included RBS: Inside The Bank that Ran Out of Money, (a one-hour documentary that was shortlisted for Bafta), Trust Me I’m A Banker for BBC Scotland Investigates, Carry on Banking for BBC 1 Panorama and seven Radio 4 ‘File on 4’ documentaries (including Badly Behaving Bankers).

In 2008-14 he was consulting editor of Bloomsbury Publishing’s Qfinance, a role that involved commissioning “think pieces” from leading global experts on economics and finance. He also wrote a regular blog on finance and economics for Qfinance.

He served as a judge on the Scottish Legal Awards from 2008 to 2013, and was an external member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland’s Future of Assurance working group in 2010-11. In 2009-11, Ian was visiting lecturer at the department of film, media and journalism at the University of Stirling, where he taught on the UK’s first MSc in financial journalism, a course he helped to launch.

From March to September 2009 he was business editor, Scotland, of The Sunday Times. From 2006 to 2008 he was legal and accountancy correspondent (freelance) of The Herald.

After spending 12 years working in London and Paris, Ian moved to Scotland when he helped launch the Sunday Herald in February 1999. Appointed by founding editor Andrew Jaspan, he was financial editor and deputy business editor from 1999 until 2006, when he left to go freelance and broaden his career, whilst remaining a regular contributor to the newspaper. Stand out articles from the Sunday Herald include World Bank rebel wages war on Wall Street (July 7th, 2002) and After the fall (October 5th, 2008). A key article Ian wrote for the Financial Times was Why a crash is on the cards (November 27th, 2006)

During the 1990s, Fraser held senior editorial roles at Director, where he was editor for two years, and EuroBusiness, and was editor of internal magazines for Unilever. In the early to mid-1990s, he worked as a freelance journalist and travel writer, based in London and Central & Eastern Europe, contributing to titles including the Financial Times, Daily Telegraph, Independent, Independent on Sunday, The Guardian, The Observer, The European, The Scotsman and GQ.

In addition to mainstream journalism, Ian blogs for Huffington PostNaked Capitalism and at his own website. Many of his blogs are cross-posted on Seeking Alpha, The Economic Populist, Economy Watch and Mindful Money. Ian also occasionally writes — or ghost-writes — articles for corporate clients. These have included Baillie Gifford, Centrica, Deutsche Bank and Standard Life. He also provides media-training services to financial institutions and professional services firms. He always declares such assignments to commissioning editors.

Ian speaks fluent French and graduated M.A. (honours) in English Language and Literature from the University of St Andrews, where he also studied Economics, History of Art and Medieval History. He is member of the Chartered Institute of Journalists, the world’s oldest professional body for journalists. Ian has won and been shortlisted for a number of UK journalism awards.

 

 

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