Journalists
Born in 1965, Nicholas Dunbar trained as a physicist at Cambridge and Harvard universities. He was inspired to enter financial journalism by university friends who had taken their mathematical skills from academia onto the trading floor. Since 1998, he has been technical editor of Risk magazine. In 1999, he published his first book, Inventing Money: the story of Long-Term Capital Management and the legends behind it (Wiley, 1999). In 2005, he launched Life & Pensions, a sister publication to Risk that helps the insurance and pensions industry to learn about new risk management techniques. He is widely respected for a series of exclusive stories on derivatives blow-ups, and in 2007 he won the State Street award for institutional financial journalism.
Banks often say that clients who lost money with the firm were “sophisticated” investors - look at Goldman Sachs’ rebuttal of the SEC’s subprime charges. But the word inverted into a badge of idiocy in the credit boom. The smart money exploited the twist with devastating effect.
In 2000, the Wall Street bank's assistance in educating the SEC on derivatives and hedging helped it win a coveted Risk Manager of the Year trophy. The judge who gave the award explains how Goldman's behaviour since caused its relations with the regulator to sour so badly.
The Financial Services Authority has held up the UK insurer's takeover of AIA after raising concerns about the $35.5 billion deal. It's a reminder that regulators are taking a tougher line with insurance conglomerates, as well as banks, writes Nicholas Dunbar.
In 2003, Nicholas Dunbar put Goldman Sachs' swap deals with Greece into the public domain. Revisiting the original story, he argues that the current controversy over the transaction highlights what goes wrong when weak public sector governance meets financial innovation.