Chris Blackhurst



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Area of interest: Business, City

Journals/Organisation: The Independent | Evening Standard

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Website: http://www.independent.co.uk/biography/chris-blackhurst-8118282.html | http://www.standard.co.uk/biography/chris-blackhurst

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Networks: https://twitter.com/c_blackhurst | http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/chris-blackhurst/80/110/364



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Career: A journalist since 1984, his previous posts include: Deputy Editor at the Independent and Independent on Sunday and Daily Express, and Westminster Correspondent of the Independent. He has written for Management Today for the past 15 years and has contributed to numerous other magazines and publications, as well as writing and presenting two Radio 4 Profiles last year. He edited the City Pages of the Evening Standard from 2002 until he was appointed as Editor of The Independent in 2011 Current position/role: The Independent and Evening Standard: Group Content Director


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Controversy/Criticism: The perfect epitaph for establishment journalism - by Glenn Greenwald: 'If MI5 warns that this is not in the public interest who am I to disbelieve them?', says the former editor of The Independent - 15th October

Awards/Honours: He has received awards from the British Press Awards and the London Press Club as well as TSB Financial Journalist of the Year

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Articles:

 * Business leaders like Apple's Tim Cook must stop being one thing in public and another in private - Too many firms that pride themselves on their LGBT policies have been led by people too scared to go public - 31st October 2014
 * Pride comes before a fall, as Standard Chartered and its boss, Peter Sands, find out - Midweek View: When times were buoyant, his character was not an issue. Now they’re hard, his enemies are hovering - 29th October 2014
 * Tesco’s new chief should listen to the spinners because silence isn’t golden - My Week: Last Sunday morning, the cynic in me went on alert. Two media stories about Tesco and the accounts manipulation were so pro-Tesco’s new management, so similar in detail, that I could not help but smell spinners at work. - 25th October 2014
 * Devolution for the North would be great if only Manchester didn’t rile the region’s other major cities so much - Let’s sound a note of caution over the ManSheffLeedsPool idea - 24th October 2014
 * Equitable Life campaign proves a gift for opportunist Ukip leader Nigel Farage - Midweek View: Both main political parties have soul-searching to do - as yet again, Farage shows an ability to leave them gasping - 22nd October 2014
 * Lord Freud was a ticking Tory time-bomb just waiting to explode - If you read about Freud's time spent working in the City, then his latest comments come as little surprise - 17th October 2014
 * We’ll all pay for it if pensioners use their new freedoms to splurge - Midweek View: Does George Osborne’s plan make provision for looking after pensioners once they’ve had their longed-for cruise? - 16th October 2014
 * We don’t need shops. We do need homes. Let’s swap one for the other - The latest figures on the make-up of our high streets demand a radical response - 9th October 2014
 * Tesco fracas shows we should have paid heed to struggling farmers - Midweek View: My own favourite? ‘Just gimme’ - a demand for cash for no particular reason, ‘normally to fill a profit gap’ - 8th October 2014
 * It’s not because I’m sentimental about the North that I believe it needs devolved powers - This is a region that deserves the opportunity to reinvent itself - 3rd October 2014
 * It’s the end of the world as the City knows it when Tesco comes up short - My Week - 29th September 2014
 * So my town’s the most miserable there is, but I disagree - So, the boffins at ONS maintain that Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria is the least happy place - 25th September 2014
 * Tesco is not the first retail giant to lose its crown, but the grocer is still in denial - Midweek View: None of it mattered until sales dropped. Then, Tesco lashed out, blaming everybody but itself for its fading performance - 24th September
 * There is no one cause for the demise of Phones 4U - But the end result is unsatisfactory for most - 17th September 2014
 * ‘People listen to business leaders’ shock. Is it an omen for that other referendum? - Scots seem to be listening to the bosses on independence while the UK ignoring them on the EU - 13th September 2014
 * Scotland has allowed Business to make itself heard – and not before time - The Yes/No vote has shown how maligned the commercial world is - 12th September 2014
 * The Bank of England has to get down and dirty with City traders if we are to prevent another crisis - When Mervyn King was Governor of the Bank of England, I went for lunch with him there. It was a surreal experience - 10th September 2014
 * How do we prevent banks and their workers from acting improperly? - 'Mervyn King’s problem was that he never stepped out and smelt the air. I was expecting better, though, from Mark Carney' - 9th September 2014
 * It’s right that we get tough on economic crime, but we've a lot of catching up to do - Midweek View: In its annual performance report for 2013/4, the UK Financial Conduct Authority disclosed how many prosecutions it had brought in the year for market abuse: one - 3rd September 2014
 * When elitism grips the top of British society to this extent, there is only one answer: abolish private schools - The evidence from a new report is damning - 29th August 2014
 * Rory McIlroy gets £155m from his sponsor Nike – yet the industry is in crisis. Maybe bicycle golf is the answer? - Midweek View: As a sport it doesn’t reflect the kind of values millennials like – diversity, inclusion - 27th August 2014
 * What's more important: skills or grades? - Even if they get the results they want, students have been warned that they might still lack what employers are really looking for - 15th August 2014
 * The Government must intervene to unmask foreign buyers inflating a new property bubble with questionable cash - Midweek View: They’re buying because our regulation is ‘light touch’ - code in international circles for non-existent - 13th August 2014
 * Don’t be taken in by the buffoonery. Boris is a very serious operator - No other politician has anything like his broad appeal - 7th August 2014
 * Mike Ashley is not to the City’s tastes but those who scorn him would do better to follow his example - Midweek View: My respect for Mr Ashley is not just that he stopped my table-tennis-loving nine-year-old having a tantrum - 6th August 2014
 * Most politicians don't have a clue about issues outside of their southern bubble - As the next election approaches, MPs think they can throw money at issues to buy them easy votes - 6th August 2014
 * Careful, Mr Cameron. Don't flirt with us on tax - Ministers have taken their eye off the middle and higher-earners - 2nd August 2014
 * Let’s stop moaning and start acting – it’s time to bank on getting tough with our white-collar crooks - Midweek View: The Med resounds to the laughter of top bankers on their yachts and in their villas, reputations still intact - 30th July 2014
 * The Government’s attitude to the civil service is breathtaking hypocrisy - In public they condemn public sector strikes, but behind closed doors they are delighted - 11th July 2014
 * Our creative sector is the ‘envy of the world’. This man can stop us giving it away to the world - Midweek View - 9th July 2014
 * We can't prevent the next economic crisis. But attempts to do so could threaten jobs and research - Midweek View: By wanting to prevent the big boys from having special access, regulators have created another uneven pitch - 2nd July 2014
 * What is David Cameron playing at? His anti-EU stance is totally irresponsible - Just because the PM has it in for Jean-Claude Juncker shouldn’t mean he ignores the advice of British business - 27th June 2014
 * Competition with London could be the best way to forge the right connections in the North of England - Midweek View: Lofty talk of a high-speed rail service and greater powers to elected mayors is not the solution - 25th June 2014
 * Andy Coulson – the consummate tabloid hack who went too far - The News of the World man’s zeal for a story was his undoing - 25th June 2014
 * Despite new plans, Miliband isn't taking an axe to welfare - Labour needs to adapt its policies to the changing attitudes of the British public towards welfare - 21st June 2014
 * Chris Blackhurst: A nation of shopkeepers got to taste the difference when Justin King took charge of Sainsbury's - Midweek View: He was in the vanguard of the new breed of egalitarian bosses: out went the pinstripes - titles were banished - 11th June
 * Mayhem in the housing market - A new bubble is growing before we’ve paid for the fall-out of the last - 6th June 2014
 * A Silicon Valley tycoon who made a paper (less) fortune teaches us how Britain is miles behind - Midweek View: London is like the UN, even more so than Silicon Valley, but what there is not is that tight community - 5th June 2014
 * Theresa May is right to challenge the police - That a Conservative can make criticisms proves there is a problem - 23rd May 2014
 * Ten years ago, Philip Green walked away from his bid for M&S – and it's been going backwards ever since - Midweek View: It sits there, like a giant bloated beast, unable to swish its tail and crush the faster, terrier-like opposition - 21st May 2014
 * The Supergun plot, murders and a report we can't ignore - A number of mysterious deaths included a journalist found hanged in Chile - 17th May 2014
 * 'Aggressive' tax avoidance? It's time for politicians to stop offering soundbites and send out hefty bills - Midweek View: Aggressive is a weasel word, designed to offer a get-out rather than an easily prescribed target - 14th May 2014
 * The tradition of philanthropy has seemingly died out in the UK - The advent of the welfare state was viewed incorrectly as lessening the need for charity - 9th May 2014
 * The truth of the Royal Mail sell-off? The taxpayer was taken for a ride - Twelve of the Lucky 16 sold their holdings immediately - 1st May 2014
 * Pitching an idea to the Dragons' Den investors should be only the beginning for entrepreneurs and their projects - Midweek View: What there is not, sadly, is enough chat of building up the firm and handing it over to the next generation - 23rd April 2014
 * What would I do if I woke up tomorrow morning and were Prime Minister? Well... - The instant solution to social inequality is to ban public schools - 11th April 2014
 * Bellyaching about foreign investors, empty properties and taxes won't stop a bubble. We must get building - Midweek View: People must be encouraged to head to east London where land is cheaper and more plentiful - 9th April 2014
 * Ukip, not Labour, is now Britain’s most working-class party - Ukip’s grumpy blue rinse and harrumphing ex-army officer image is not the reality - 4th April
 * The new head of the Financial Conduct Authority's determination to shoot first and ask questions later has backfired spectacularly - Midweek View: The FCA must hold itself to at least as high standards as it would expect of a listed company - 3rd April 2014
 * At long last, the Royal and Ancient golf club may admit women. Now for the other all-male bastions of British culture... - We need quotas to see the end of boys club boardrooms - 27th March 2014
 * Snobbery over 'wide-boy chancers'? It's time to embrace entrepreneurial spirit if we want to compete on world stage - Midweek View: No wonder, with that prevailing attitude, so few of our children go on to become innovators and risk-takers - 26th March 2014
 * Banks strive to outsmart us – but it’s not a clever choice - It’s typical of the contempt for the little man in our banks - 25th March 2014
 * How to explain Lloyds' decision not to award full compensation to victims of its PPI mis-selling? - The wheeze they've come up with is deeply cynical - but unsurprising - 25th March 2014
 * Why is Osborne trusting me with my cash? - Now we can all be a little more reckless in retirement - 23rd March 2014
 * 'Ghost gazumping' and other estate agent tricks are inflating house prices – but lack of new homes is root of the problem - Midweek View: They were nice, terraced houses in a smart area. And they were commanding silly, frightening sums - 19th March 2014
 * Apparently it is winning that counts: UK Sport’s approach to distributing funding is deeply troubling - Whenever the BBC trumpeted a “Team GB” medal-winner at the Sochi Winter Olympics and Paralympics..... - 14th March 2014
 * We have a strong, regulated City and foreign money has always been key – so why do some hark back to the past? - Midweek View: We can don rose-tinted glasses but can we really get soppy about corporate raiders and junk bonds? - 12th March 2014
 * Printing money has helped only the rich - The PM is quick to don his hard-hat, but he must also invest in infrastructure - 8th March 2014
 * Forget a prawn cocktail offensive – Labour's hysterical anti-big business stance is causing boardroom disquiet - Midweek View: It shows a level of ignorance and rank hypocrisy and ill-thought-through opportunism that is frightening - 5th March 2014
 * Which?, the vibrant consumer body, is on the side of 'good business', says its chief executive – whoever's in charge at Westminster next year - Midweek View: In other words, Mr Miliband, it's not there to be bandied about as a Labour election accessory, so hands off - 26th February 2014
 * By buying the line that investment bankers rule the world and must be paid accordingly, Barclays may well become the 'Go From' bank - Midweek View: The Go To bank? Go to for what? A queue? Empty seats behind the glass? A machine that doesn't work? - 12th February 2014
 * Gender quotas: Compulsion is needed to increase the number of women in boardrooms - Chairmen pay lip service to women’s demands, but, once they are out of earshot, will revert to their traditional sexism - 29th January 2014
 * Labour's magnificent seven will not make any difference to high street banking, Ed Miliband is merely showboating - As they will have no track record to speak of, they will find it harder to raise capital to fund their activities - 22nd January 2014
 * More banks, Ed? Not your best idea - Miliband’s plan to take five and make it into seven fails to tackle the root of the banking problem - 22nd January 2014
 * Before we get too smug about London's wealth, maybe we should be asking more questions about foreigners with suspicious fortunes - Midweek View: Foreign cash is pouring in. But are these all people we'd like to do business with? - 8th January 2014
 * Nigella Lawson and Charles Saatchi: Though they have more money, the rich are not so different - As has been shown all too vividly, the rich remain human, with everything that brings - 21st December 2013
 * How many regulators does it take to run British business into the ground? - Midweek View: Reducing the level of scrutiny simply lowers the incentives for regulators to make sound decisions - 18th December 2013
 * Anxious shopkeepers study the runes as Christmas rush gets a late start - Midweek View: Retailers are seeing heavy spending within the M25, but far more caution outside - 11th December 2013
 * Why Vince Cable must break the monopoly of law’s magic circle - Never has so much been charged by so few to so many - 4th December 2013
 * We should have let banks go to the wall. They don’t care about our wellbeing - Midweek View: The City in the past has behaved like a separate country, aloof from all of us - 27th November 2013
 * Banks should be run by bankers to avoid future disasters - There is hardly a bank that has not been the focus of scandal since the collapse of 2008 - 20th November 2013
 * End stagnation and create aspiration with free grammar schools - I did not go to Eton but to a free grammar school that operated along equivalent lines - 14th November 2013
 * It’s BT 1 and Sky 0 as they fight it out in TV football’s big match - With BT’s grabbing of the live Champions League matches for a whistle-inducing £900m - we’ve a genuine, red-blooded contest to sit back and savour - 13th November 2013
 * Fish supper with that scarf, madam? M&S boss faces uphill task - Midweek View: To smash Waitrose at food, Zara at clothes and Net-a-Porter online is well-nigh impossible - 6th November 2013
 * Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg: Where exactly are the UK's equivalent business leaders? - Not nearly enough effort is being put on ambition in our top boardrooms - 25th October 2013
 * The bald truth? I don't miss my hair - Some people might call me slaphead, but at least I'm not going grey - 23rd October 2013
 * Tesco, the friendly grocer, pins hope on image revamp - Midweek View: Make no mistake - the Leahy style belongs to the past - 23rd October 2013
 * Wooing the Chinese is the easy bit. The challenge is to get the British to invest - On this occasion, there was a certain irony in Boris and George’s appeals for the Chinese to spend their money in Britain - 18th October 2013
 * We don't all need to go to university - New 'career colleges' could reverse decades of misguided policy - 16th October 2013
 * Why I'm sure Sir Richard Branson won't find life too taxing on his Caribbean island - Midweek View: He's so rich he can pay whatever Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs throws at him - 16th October 2013
 * Edward Snowden’s secrets may be dangerous. I would not have published them - If MI5 warns that this is not in the public interest who am I to disbelieve them? - 14th October 2013
 * The hackers’ greatest asset is our complacency - A false tweet from Associated Press claimed Obama had been injured by a bomb - 12th October 2013
 * It was only when I rubbed shoulders with private school children that I realised what we had missed - My school was good at exams - but had no concept of an old boys' network - 11th October 2013
 * Be it Leahy or Ferguson – beware the legacy of a leader who stays too long - This week, Tesco disclosed a slump in first-half profits of 24.5 per cent - 4th October 2013
 * More measured, less shrill, but George Osborne still needs to connect with the real world - Midweek View: He can't even get the current deficit down, yet here he is, talking of having too much money - 2nd October 2013
 * The Michael Spencer I know is utterly disgusted by what his traders got up to - His reaction to the Libor scandal was, in our conversation, one of fury and shock - 27th September 2013
 * Labour's 'use it or lose it' housing plan could build up to a major problem - Midweek View: Reducing home prices is only half the equation. Buyers still have to be able to rustle up the cash - 25th September 2013
 * Portas was just another fall guy for the Government’s lack of ideas - It really is pathetic, this belief of senior politicians that we will be fooled by what amounts to little more than high-profile, public relations-led window-dressing - 20th September 2013
 * Money-men are sitting on their hands – where are all the deals? - Midweek View: In the febrile atmosphere engulfing us CEOs would rather do nothing than risk public opprobrium - 18th September 2013
 * There is another housing bubble… it is high-rise and lacks proper amenities - The Alexander, Richmond Park, Newt & Ferret, Cambridge, Kelly Arms, Swan, Six Bells… all pubs that used to be near my house. Now, all closed and, in most cases, either turned into flats or about to be turned into flats - 13th September 2013
 * It's time we paid attention to Nev and his call centre, not the huge corporations - Midweek View: Small businesses account for half our national income and two-thirds of all employment - 11th September 2013
 * Scallops and Sellotape? How not to lead, by Fred the Shred - Midweek View: The Gogarburn HQ is a great monument to Mr Goodwin's vanity. The detail here is frightening, and laughable - 4th September 2013
 * Even dear old ethical businesses screw up sometimes – as Co-op has done - It’s all very well lauding the Co-op and John Lewis, but these are businesses run by people and the latter have an unfortunate habit of making mistakes - 30th August 2013
 * Foxtons float? Investors must be cunning when it comes to private equity - Midweek View: Investors are wary of clever financial jiggery-pokery that may see a business look brilliant on paper, but in reality it's a dud - 28th August 2013
 * We know the moral case against war, but what about the economic one? - Since 1945, Britain has spent billions on a range of military expeditions - 17th August 2013
 * Cyclists must give way to stay safe - The bicycle needs its own space – and restrictions - 15th August 2013
 * So what's $6bn between friends? Such a big loss and so little fuss - Midweek View: Has a government or business been ragingover the London Whale's exploits? No. Has a client made a civil claim? No - 14th August 2013
 * We’re smitten, Mark. But how far can we go? - We have to get back in the game of wooing mass industrial investment - 9th August 2013
 * In the Aegean it's business as usual, but where are the jobless Greeks? - Midweek View: Unemployment is twice the eurozone average, yet here I am being waited upon by people who are not Greek - 7th August 2013
 * A line on the bar floor. Women not allowed to cross it. That’s golf for you - Ever since I was seven or eight I’ve played golf. There was a club near where we lived and going along there with school friends seemed a natural thing to do - 19th July 2013
 * Insider dealing is still rife in the City no matter how you count the numbers - Midweek View: In 2008, the then chairman of HBOS, Lord Stevenson, told the bank’s shareholders: “There is a strong case for believing that the UK is exceptionally bad at dealing with white-collar crime - 17th July 2013
 * How can a school be judged fairly when an inspector calls ahead? - 12th July 2013
 * Only white shirt I found in M&S was for an orang-utan - Midweek View - 10th July 2013
 * Why build HS2 and waste billions that could be used elsewhere? - I have the feeling this is a sop. Even carried out, it won't solve underlying weakness - 5th July 2013
 * It’s the loyal readers who make this paper what it is - After two years I'm moving on from my role as editor - 21st June 2013
 * Stphen Hester did sterling work in a tough job at RBS – but politics beat him in the end - His reluctance to stay on much beyond 2015 has been used to oust him. It’s a fig leaf - 14th June 2013
 * If you ask me…we would never swap Deborah for Pippa - Pippa Middleton for Deborah Ross? Seriously? As I said at the outset, oh dear - 8th June 2013
 * Images of Woolwich suspects were used in public interest - Dreadful and distressing as they were, reproducing the photographs undeniably served a public purpose - 25th May 2013
 * Endless wrangling, but we’ve had a Leveson breakthrough - There was no chance of the newspaper groups’ alternative charter gaining wide acceptance if it failed this independence test. This is a major step in the right direction - 11th May 2013
 * Stuart Hall's arrest is a tribute to good police work - and one of our journalists - Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a columnist for this paper, acted on a reader's letter - 4th May 2013
 * Wakefield’s MMR rant was read out of context - Over the 15 years since Wakefield published his infamous Lancet paper which triggered the MMR controversy, this paper has published many stories highlighting the harm he was causing - 20th April 2013
 * It’s not easy speaking in measured tones about Philpott - Welfare was not to blame - but this man's lifestyle jars nonetheless - 6th April 2013
 * Leveson: We the press only have ourselves to blame - I don't wish for any state involvement in the press, but we did not give enough ground to Cameron in the aftermath of the Leveson report - 21st March 2013
 * The Leveson dispute could destroy our free press - One of the principles that made me want to be a journalist in the first place and to help produce a newspaper such as this one, is at stake - 16th March 2013
 * Why we went our own way on Leveson - The Independent's Editor explains why he, along with colleagues at the Financial Times and The Guardian, has called for a new system of press regulation - 13th March 2013
 * Letter from the Editor: Leveson should blow whistle on those who manipulate the news - Sir Alex Ferguson has barred the Independent from his Carrington press conferences after a report by one our writers detailed his fall-out with Rooney - 9th March 2013
 * Letter From the Editor: It's tough, but not as tough as reporting from a war zone - This was one of those weeks when, as Editor, I freely, but nonetheless uncomfortably, admit to being a hypocrite - 19th January 2013
 * The press was on trial and the judge was jury and defence rolled into one. So what did we expect? - The Editor of The Independent says the man in charge of this Inquiry approached it like a lawyer – alas for both him and us, we’re not in the legal profession - 30th November 2012
 * Leveson ignores the press' positive power - As a wholesale demolition of our trade, Lord Leveson's report takes some beating - 8th September 2012
 * Will Amazon be the new beast in our supermarkets jungle once it gets fresh? - One evening this week, I dined with a senior executive from one of our biggest supermarket groups. I'm covering my tracks because we agreed the conversation was off the record - 25th August 2012
 * How the Sultan of Berkeley Square fell off his throne - There was a period when the City was transfixed by Asil Nadir. He was the poster boy of the Thatcher generation, whose rise followed her own and seemingly stood for the same values of hard work and enterprise - 23rd August 2012
 * There's nothing remotely 'leftie' about celebrating immigration and the NHS - Danny Boyle's Opening Ceremony was dismissed as 'leftie, multicultural crap' by right-wing Tory MP Aidan Burley. Chris Blackhurst, who was there, insists nothing could be further from the truth - 30th July
 * Grammar schools educated people to lead the world. They can do so again - Schools like mine instilled self-confidence. They applauded intellectual prowess - 25th May



News & updates:

 * Independent return: Chris Blackhurst's career in profile - Ex-Independent deputy Chris Blackhurst returns a decade later with career that includes the Express and Armanigate scoop - The Guardian, 1st July 2011



References:


Links:

 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Blackhurst