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John Plender has been a senior editorial writer and columnist at the Financial Times since 1981, an assignment he combined until recently with current affairs broadcasting for the BBC and Channel Four. He has a weekly column on economics and business on Mondays and also writes for the opinion pages.
After taking his degree at Oxford University John Plender joined Deloitte Plender Griffiths in the City of London in 1967, qualifying as a chartered accountant in 1970. He then moved into journalism, becoming financial editor of The Economist in 1974 where he remained until taking up a governmental appointment in the Foreign Office policy planning staff in 1980.
John Plender was the winner of the Wincott Foundation senior prize for excellence in financial journalism in 1994. His books include That’s The Way The Money Goes (Andre Deutsch, 1982), The Square Mile, with Paul Wallace, (Hutchinson, 1984), A Stake In The Future (Nicholas Brealey, 1997) and Going Off The Rails - Global Capital And The Crisis Of Legitimacy (John Wiley, 2003)
Comment on a John Plender column - -
Insight: Redesigning a flawed system
John Plender asks whether any lessons can be learnt from the hedge fund business model for redesigning a flawed narrow banking system
Insight: Rethinking capital structures
We are in an interregnum where investors are circumspect about leverage, says John Plender. Now’s the time for companies to think again about capital structures
Insight: No confidence in state ownership
Bank’s actions to pay off government stakes reflects zero confidence in state ownership and growing confidence in the future of banking, writes John Plender
US and China must guard against their fatal embrace
Interdependence hurts. That is one of several uncomfortable messages arising from the trade spat between the US and China over tyres, poultry and car parts, writes John Plender
Insight: Bias against innovation
Some innovation is beneficial. But, writes John Plender, there are not many innovations in finance that do not have malign as well as benign effects
Insight: Getting the show on the road
Creditor countries need to stimulate their economies while the mainly Anglophone debtor countries moderate their excesses, says John Plender
Shame gene has disappeared from financial system
The recent results of the big banks have shown once again that bank profits are increasingly driven by proprietary trading. And ethical niceties rarely rank high on the traders’ agenda
Ditch theory and take away the punchbowl
John Plender on how central bankers have been unwilling to take pre-emptive action to stop bubbles forming
Insight: A flawed model is preserved
The message is speculative business as usual, though at a higher capital cost, says John Plender
A winner’s curse that haunts the banking behemoths
As governments roll out plans to re-regulate the financial system, one aspect of the financial debacle receives far too little attention: the speed with which great institutions can be destroyed by ill-judged takeovers
