About

About Nicholas Dunbar

I grew up in London and trained as a physicist at Manchester, Cambridge and Harvard universities in the late 1980s. I was inspired to become a financial journalist by university friends who had taken their mathematical skills from academia onto the trading floors of investment banks.

From 1998 until 2009, I was technical editor of Risk magazine, the bible of the derivatives industry published by Incisive Media. In 2005, I launched Life & Pensions, a sister publication to Risk that helps the insurance and pensions industry to learn about new risk management techniques. I sold Life & Pensions to Incisive Media in January 2009.

During this period, I wrote a series of exclusive stories on derivatives blow-ups which cemented my reputation as an investigative journalist, and in 2007 I won the State Street award for institutional financial journalism. I also write a column called ‘Risky Finance’ for the authoritative financial commentary service Reuters Breakingviews.

In 1999, I published my first book, Inventing Money: the story of Long-Term Capital Management and the legends behind it (Wiley, 1999). My next book, The Devil’s Derivatives, will be published in July 2011.

Photo: Karl Attard