Simon Jack | |
---|---|
Born | London, England | 10 May 1971
Nationality | British |
Education | Merchant Taylors' Boys' School, Crosby |
Alma mater | St John's College, Oxford |
Occupation(s) | Journalist, news correspondent |
Employer | BBC |
Title | Business Editor of BBC News (2016–present) |
Spouse | Suzy Barry |
Simon Jack (born 10 May 1971) is an English business journalist and news correspondent. He is currently the Business Editor for BBC News, known for appearing on BBC Breakfast until September 2011 and on BBC Radio 4's Today . [1] He has also presented business and financial podcasts for The Daily Telegraph . [2]
Simon Jack was born on 10 May 1971 in London. [3] He attended Merchant Taylors' Boys' School, Crosby, Merseyside, and graduated from St John's College, Oxford with a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. [4] Of his time at Oxford, Jack said: “I did the same degree as David Cameron. I was a contemporary of George Osborne. I knew him a little bit. He was well-known at university and his notoriety of his membership of certain clubs is well known – like the Bullingdon. I wasn't a member of any of those." [3]
Before entering journalism, Jack worked for a decade as a corporate and investment banker in London, New York City and Bermuda. He has said that he neither liked the work, nor showed much ability at it. [5] In 2003 he joined the BBC's business and economics unit and since then has worked on BBC Radio 4's Today Programme and Radio 5 Live's Wake Up to Money . He has also presented business and financial podcasts for The Daily Telegraph .[ citation needed ]
Jack was frequently seen on British television during the fortnight beginning on 7 September 2008 during which he reported for BBC News, the BBC News Channel and Working Lunch on the banking crisis that saw the Federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the bailout of AIG and the Lloyds TSB takeover of HBOS. He was often seen reporting from the London Stock Exchange, Canary Wharf and outside the offices of HBOS and Lehman Brothers in London.[ citation needed ]
Jack replaced Declan Curry as business presenter for BBC Breakfast in October 2008. In April 2010, he presented BBC Breakfast alongside Sian Williams while regular presenter Bill Turnbull followed the 2010 general election campaign trail. In September 2011, he left the BBC Breakfast team to join BBC Radio 4's Today.[ citation needed ]
On 13 April 2015 Jack, whose father killed himself, appeared in a BBC Panorama series relating to the survivors of suicide which investigated why more middle-aged men kill themselves than any other group. [6]
On 5 February 2016, Jack was appointed the BBC's Business Editor, replacing the promoted Kamal Ahmed. [7]
On 3 July 2023, Jack sat next to Dame Alison Rose, the chief executive of NatWest bank at the BBC Correspondents’ Charity Dinner. [8] The following day Jack claimed that Nigel Farage had his bank account at Coutts closed for falling "below the financial threshold required to hold an account". [9] [10] However after submitting a subject access request in July, Farage published a 40-page internal document from Coutts, which contained minutes from a meeting of the bank's Wealth Reputational Risk Committee on 17 November 2022, describing Farage as a "disingenuous grifter" who promoted "xenophobic, chauvinistic and racist views", and said his "views were at odds with our position as an inclusive organisation", with "risk factors including... controversial public statements which were felt to conflict with the bank’s purpose", whilst financially his account's "economic contribution is now sufficient to retain on a commercial basis”. [11] [12] [13]
On 24 July 2023, Jack issued an apology to Farage on Twitter for the story. Farage accepted the apology. Jack said his story was "from a trusted and senior source. However, the information turned out to be incomplete and inaccurate." [14] On 25 July, Rose admitted to 'serious error of judgement' in discussing Farage's Coutts accounts with Jack, revealing that she had been the source of the story. [15]
Jack lives in Notting Hill and is married to Suzy Barry, [16] and is a son-in-law of the composer John Barry. [17]
NatWest Group plc is a British banking and insurance holding company, based in Edinburgh, Scotland. The group operates a wide variety of banking brands offering personal and business banking, private banking, investment banking, insurance and corporate finance. In the United Kingdom, its main subsidiary companies are National Westminster Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, NatWest Markets and Coutts. The group issues banknotes in Scotland and Northern Ireland; as of 2014, the Royal Bank of Scotland was the only bank in the UK to continue to print £1 notes.
Nigel Paul Farage is a British broadcaster and former politician who was Leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) from 2006 to 2009 and 2010 to 2016 and Leader of the Brexit Party from 2019 to 2021. He served as Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for South East England from 1999 until the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union in 2020. He was the host of The Nigel Farage Show, a radio phone-in on the Global-owned talk radio station LBC, from 2017 to 2020. Farage is currently the Honorary President of Reform UK and a presenter for GB News.
Simon Andrew Hicks Mayo is an English radio presenter and author who worked for BBC Radio from 1982 until 2022.
Coutts & Co. is a British private bank and wealth manager headquartered in London, England.
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This is a list of events in British radio during 2013.
This is a list of events in British radio during 2014.
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Reform UK is a right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. It was founded with support from Nigel Farage in November 2018 as the Brexit Party, advocating hard Euroscepticism and a no-deal Brexit and was a significant political force in 2019. After Brexit, it was renamed to Reform UK in January 2021, and became primarily an anti-lockdown party during the COVID-19 pandemic. Subsequently, in December 2022, it began campaigning on broader right-wing populist themes during the British cost-of-living crisis. Its greatest electoral success was as the Brexit Party, which won 29 seats and the largest share of the national vote in the 2019 European Parliament election.
Catherine Blaiklock is an English financial trader and hotelier who was the founder and first leader of the Brexit Party, a political party established in January 2019 to support a no-deal Brexit. She was forced to resign as leader in March 2019 when it was disclosed she had made anti-Islamic and racist statements online. Blaiklock had been the Economics Spokesperson for the UK Independence Party (UKIP), which she left in late 2018. Before entering politics in 2016, she worked as a financial currency and derivatives trader. She also founded a Nepali healthcare charity with her ex-husband, an Everest Sherpa. Her father is polar explorer Ken Blaiklock.
Dame Alison Marie Rose-Slade is a British banker, who was chief executive (CEO) of NatWest Group from November 2019 to July 2023. She became the first woman to lead a major UK lender after leading government investigations into the poor representation of women in business. She was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2023 Birthday Honours. Later that year, she resigned from her position at NatWest for what she admitted was a "serious error of judgement", after she broke client confidentiality in relation to the closure of a client's account.
Goddard Gunster is an American lobbying firm and referendum specialist founded by the late Ben Goddard. Its current president is Gerry Gunster.
Alexandra Lesley Phillips is a British journalist and former politician. She served as a Brexit Party Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the South East England constituency from 2019 to 2020. She was the second candidate on the party's list for the constituency after party leader Nigel Farage. Phillips was previously head of media at the UK Independence Party (UKIP), which she left in September 2016. She was a GB News presenter between June 2021 and September 2022. In February 2023, Phillips joined Reform UK.
GB News is a British free-to-air opinion-orientated news television and radio channel. The channel is available on Freeview, Freesat, Sky, YouView, Virgin Media and via the internet on Samsung TV Plus and YouTube. Since 4 January 2022, an audio simulcast of the station has been available on DAB+ radio.
This is a timeline of the history of GB News, a free-to-air television and radio news channel in the United Kingdom.
In June 2023, the private bank Coutts closed the account held by the British broadcaster and former politician Nigel Farage. NatWest, the owner of Coutts, initially claimed that he failed to meet the Coutts eligibility criteria of holding £1,000,000 or more in his account, following the expiry of his mortgage. After Farage went to the press about the closure, it was discovered that Coutts had closed Farage's account as they deemed him to be "at best seen as xenophobic and pandering to racists". Following media attention, the NatWest CEO, Dame Alison Rose resigned.
De-banking, also known within the banking industry as de-risking, is the closure of people's or organizations' bank accounts by banks who perceive the account holders to pose a financial, legal, regulatory, or reputational risk to the bank.