John Gapper writes an award-winning column on business, with a focus on finance, media and technology, and also contributes editorials and features, including regular Lunch with the FT interviews. He is one of the FT’s most senior and influential writers, having covered the financial and media industries, as well as employment issues, before taking up his current role in 2003.
He was based in the FT’s New York office 2005-2012, where he helped to lead its successful expansion in the US. Gapper was formerly comment editor of the FT, and in that role was in charge of introducing and editing the paper’s award-winning comment page. As a columnist, he has written on topics including Wall Street and the aftermath of the financial crisis; management and corporate strategy, the future of digital news and entertainment; innovation and venture capital; how should companies handle crises, and the disruptive impact of technology.
Gapper has written two novels, The Ghost Shift and A Fatal Debt, both published by Random House in the US. He is also the author of the non-fiction works How to be a Rogue Trader and All That Glitters, an account of the collapse of Barings. He often appears on television and radio, including on the BBC, CNBC and CNN.
The winner of the 2013 Gerald Loeb award for commentary, he has received three annual Best in Business citations for his column from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. In the UK, he was named best business columnist in the 2014 Comment Awards and gained the technology writer and best communicator awards in the Business Journalist of the Year awards. He was named one of the 100 most influential men in Britain by GQ magazine.
Gapper won an open scholarship to Exeter College, Oxford University, where he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics. He was awarded a Harkness Fellowship to study at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Before joining the FT in 1987, he trained as a journalist with Mirror Group Newspapers, working on papers including the Daily Mirror, Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph. He lives in east London with his wife, the novelist Rosie Dastgir, and their two daughters.
