Directors/Shareholders
Directors
Breakingviews has seven directors. Hugo Dixon is the executive chairman and Rob Cox is the US Editor. The other directors are non-executive.
Hugo Dixon
Hugo Dixon founded Breakingviews in 1999. He is editor-in-chief and chairman. Before founding breakingviews, Hugo spent 13 years at the Financial Times, the last five as head of Lex. He began his journalistic career at the Economist. Hugo was a Brackenbury Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford, where he gained a first class degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics. Before that, he was a King’s Scholar at Eton College. He is the author of the Penguin Guide to Finance and Finance Just in Time. He was named Business Journalist of the Year 2000 in the British Press Awards. In 2008, he won the Decade of Excellence Award at the Business Journalist of the Year Awards. He is a visiting fellow at Oxford University’s Centre for Corporate Reputation.
Claudio Costamagna
Claudio Costamagna retired from Goldman Sachs in 2006 after 18 years. He was chairman of Goldman’s investment banking division for Europe, Middle East and Africa. Claudio is a non-executive director of Luxottica, Value Partners and Bulgari. Claudio is chairman of ALUB (the association of graduates from Bocconi University). He was born in 1956.
Rob Cox
Rob Cox heads up the New York bureau and edits Breakingviews’ US edition. Rob joined from Bloomberg News in London, where he oversaw European finance coverage. As South Europe bureau chief, he led Bloomberg’s editorial operations in Milan, Rome, Athens, Istanbul, Lisbon and Madrid from 1995 until 1998. Before coming to Europe, Rob covered Wall Street and US banking and the stock market for Bloomberg and for American Banker. He is a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and the University of Vermont.
Mark Dixon
Mark Dixon is a director and founder of the1, a M&A advisory firm that works globally but specialises in people business transactions. Prior to founding the1 ten years ago, he owned a management consulting practice in Russia and Eastern Europe and a series of M&A database products and newsletters. He began his career in 1980 at Charles Barker in 1980, then the leading City of London financial advertising agency, after which he entered the M&A field in New York City at Charles Street Securities, an M&A boutique specialised in the insurance sector.
Geert Linnebank
Geert Linnebank was Editor-in-Chief of Reuters from 2000 to 2006. He joined that company in Brussels in 1983 as a correspondent covering European Union affairs. Previously, he was a correspondent for AP-Dow Jones. A Dutch national born in The Hague in 1956, Geert grew up in Belgium, where he started his journalistic career with Agence Europe in 1979. He is a non-executive director of Independent Television News (ITN) and a Trustee of the Thomson Reuters Foundation. He also is a member of the Steering Committee of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University, which he helped found. Previously he has held non-executive director positions at Asia News International (ANI), the New Delhi-based video and TV news agency, and at Factiva, the business intelligence company.
Roland Rudd
Roland Rudd is the Senior Partner of Finsbury, which was acquired by WPP in June 2001. Before founding Finsbury in 1994, he worked as a financial journalist at the Financial Times. He was previously Managing Editor (Business) of The Sunday Correspondent, which he joined from The Times where he was Industrial Correspondent. He is a former policy coordinator for Lord Owen, and President of the Union at Oxford University, where he read philosophy and theology. He is a patron and board member of NSPCC's Stop Organised Abuse, an ambassador for Seeability, a member of the Tate's Corporate advisory body and on the board of the Royal Opera House Development Committee. A former board member of Britain in Europe, he is the founding Chairman of Business for New Europe.
Shareholders
Breakingviews is a private company with over 40 shareholders. Most are private individuals. BV's policy is to disclose all shareholders with stake of over 5%. They are Hugo Dixon, Roland Rudd, Mark Dixon, the Wall Street Journal and Limeport LLC. Peter Munk is the main shareholder in Limeport LLC.