About the author: Barry Riley
Barry Riley is a financial journalist who spent 34 years at the Financial Times, where his job titles included Financial Editor and Investment Editor. He was editor of the Lex column in the late 1970s and early 1980s and subsequently for many years he wrote a weekly column on investment matters called The Long View, which appeared on Saturdays. In his later years he was an associate editor of the paper.
Taking early retirement at the end of 2001, aged 59, he subsequently pursued a freelance career, continuing to contribute regularly to the FT in the FTfm section on Mondays but also for other publications. These included Financial News, for which he wrote on a wide variety of financial market topics, including regulation, financial aspects of politics and the credit boom and bust, until 2007, and Money Observer, in which he has advised readers on personal investment strategy.
He has contributed articles to the privatelycirculated publications of a number of financial companies including the wealth managers Rathbone Brothers, the Royal Bank of Canada Capital Markets and the pension fund managers SEI. He has also given lectures in London, Edinburgh and New York on the history of fund management for the Stewart Ivory Foundation, a Scottish educational charity.
During the 1990s he was for several years a trustee director of the Pearson Pension Plan. Until 2007 he continued as a member of the Plan’s investment committee, serving a total 14-year period monitoring a wide variety of investments including equities, bonds, private equity and hedge funds in a portfolio recently totalling some £1.5 billion. After taking a long active interest in the pensions sector, both as a journalist and a trustee, he was appointed an honorary fellow of the Institute of Actuaries in 2000. In 2007 he was also appointed an honorary fellow of the CFA Society of the UK.
