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John Gapper is associate editor and chief business commentator of the Financial Times. He writes a weekly column, appearing on Thursdays on the comment page, about business trends and strategy. He also contributes leaders and other articles.
He has worked for the FT since 1987, covering labour relations, banking and the media. In 1991-92, he was a Harkness fellow of the Commonwealth Fund of New York, and studied US education and training at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is co-author, with Nicholas Denton, of All That Glitters, an account of the collapse of Barings in 1995.
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Don’t turn back on financial reform
Republicans should focus on reforming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac rather than a fundamental rewrite of the Dodd-Frank act, writes John Gapper
Mauled in a case that should never have been
Guy Hands’ error in going to court over his dispute with Citigroup extended beyond the fact that his case was thin, for it also made him look incompetent
Obama must learn to love business
The US president has failed to understand or communicate the role big business plays in remoulding the economy and creating high-skilled and high-paid jobs. To provoke such an ill-tempered split is not only bad politics, but bad policy, writes John Gapper
How Annie got shot
The career woes of one of the world’s highest-paid photographers reveal a great divide between celebrity portraits and the art market, says John Gapper
China’s business elite is free enough
The student intelligentsia flocked to Tiananmen Square in 1989 and the party’s response has been to offer their offspring both outstanding economic opportunity and an acceptable degree of freedom of expresson. In the distant future, the Chinese could rise up against the state, but there is no likelihood of it now, writes John Gapper
The best bet to curb too big to fail
The best outcome would be for all countries to have clear resolution regimes and for regulators to be able either to liquidate troubled banks and sell the good assets, writes John Gapper
Kerviel is a symptom of a banking malaise
Any bank that incentivises individuals to push as aggressively as they can within its trading limits will be vulnerable to someone breaking them, writes John Gapper
Facebook is not a punk’s drama
Entrepreneurs do not create large companies by being lone, ruthless geniuses but by having the personal and organisational talents to deploy the skills of others, writes John Gapper
Shrink Germany’s problem banks
They are bloated institutions that rely heavily on wholesale funding and cannot earn enough from old-fashioned lending to survive, writes John Gapper
Paulson made the right sacrifice
Two years ago John Gapper argued that the US Treasury secretary ought to let Lehman Brothers fail. He still believes it was a gamble worth taking
