About the Author
This report was compiled and written by the editorial staff of business new europe (bne), the first magazine dedicated to reporting on business, finance, economics and politics of the 30 countries in "New Europe."
Ben Aris arrived in Moscow in October 1993 as a reporter two weeks before Boris Yeltsin sent the tanks onto the streets as part of his show down with the Communist-dominated Duma, plunging the country into a violent constitutional crisis. He is now one of the three longest-serving foreign correspondents covering Russia and eastern Europe.
Ben is the founder and editor of bne, which was established in October 2006. Prior to that he was the Moscow bureau chief for the Daily Telegraph between 1999 and 2003 as well as a contributing editor at The Banker and Euromoney, where he had a ring side seat to two wars, two stock market bubbles, the financial crisis of 1998 and the reemergence of Russia as a world power under President Vladimir Putin. Nicholas Watson is bne's managing editor and an award-wining journalist, who has enjoyed a long career as a writer in all the major regions of the globe. Prior to bne Nicholas was a correspondent/editor for International Herald Tribune TV, senior European editor for TheStreet.com, and senior editor and correspondent for Bridge News in New York and Tokyo. He was a correspondent in Japan for eight years and speaks fluent Japanese. Nicholas is the co-author of "The Bond Bible," a book about the US bond markets.
Mike Collier runs the Riga-based news and features agency Baltic Features, covering the three Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, with occasional forays into the Nordic countries. Originally from Gloucester, England, he has previously worked at the Financial Times, held editorships at the BBC, spent seven years at the UK Press Association and worked for various other independent titles.
Dominic Swire is a freelance journalist covering business and politics in Central and Eastern Europe. Dominic has travelled extensively throughout the region, reporting from Kosovo during the declaration of independence, Bulgaria and Romania during their accession to the European Union, and Ukraine to cover the expansion of the Schengen zone. Dominic is currently based in Prague and has been writing for Business New Europe since June 2006.
Clare Nuttall studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Christ Church College Oxford and then a MA in Political Economies of Russia and Eastern Europe at SOAS, before moving to Kyrgyzstan in 2000 as a journalist. She has since worked as a senior reporter at the Analytica Group and Real Deals before joining bne as Central Asian correspondent in 2008.
Graham Stack was born in Scotland but studied Russian and Romanian at the Free University Berlin before becoming a Russian-German interpreter. He has travelled extensively in eastern Europe and lived in Moscow and St Petersburg before joining bne as reporter in 2007.
