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G
illianTett holds of one of journalism’s
most coveted roles: the US Managing
Editor of the
FinancialTimes
. Based in
NewYork, she’s a columnist, runs the
American bureau and mixes with the international
business elite at the occasional Manhattan gala
dinner. She is also an author, public speaker and is
credited with predicting the story everybody else
missed: the financial crash of a decade ago.
Tett, now 49, left Cambridge with a PhD in social
anthropology, but getting a foot on the career
ladder was tough.‘It took me more than two years
of hustling as a freelance journalist – and a lot of
rejections – to get my first break,’ she recalls.
‘It then took another year of battling to secure
a full-time job at the
FT
. I worked insanely hard,
volunteering to work on holidays, nights, and
taking all the unpleasant jobs that my senior
colleagues didn’t want to do.’
Luck also played a part. She was working as an
intern at the London headquarters of the
Financial
Times
when the Soviet Union started to collapse;
one of the higher-ups suddenly realised that she was
the only person in the building who spoke Russian.
There were practically no senior female
journalists at the
FT
back in the early 1990s, hence
there was no mentor or role model for her. But the
Pink ’Un had a tolerable office culture.‘I have never
fretted too much about the “glass ceiling” but have
just tried to get on with my job, do the best I can
and laugh off any sexism – I haven’t experienced
that much in the workplace, to be honest. It has
been harder outside work with the challenge of
juggling kids and work.’
Three or four years before the crash in 2008
Tett began watching the emergence of the ultra-
complex products that banks were selling
each other and that would trigger the massive
financial crisis. But how far did she really foresee
what was coming?
Tett’s response is measured:‘I didn’t predict the
full scale of the financial crisis. But what I did do
was spot that there was a whole world of finance
which was being comprehensively ignored by
politicians, journalists and non-bankers – namely
the sphere of credit, debt and derivatives. I then
wrote a series of articles warning that there were
some major excesses in that sector which could
cause big problems.’
On the back of that she penned her bestselling
non-fiction book
Fool’s Gold
, borrowing from her
background in social anthropology to explain some
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THE INVESTOR
The woman who foresaw the crash of 2008 has had a lot
to juggle in her life as a journalist,writer and single parent
ByVictor Smart
DERIVATIVES, DIARIES
AND DAUGHTERS