By: Christian May

Editor-in-Chief Christian May is the Editor-in-Chief of City AM. He served in the role from 2015 to 2020 and returned in 2024. He writes the daily Editor's Letter for print and online and releases The Week in Business roundup video each Thursday. He is particularly interested in the health of London's capital markets, economic policy, politics, regulation and business activity in the City of London. He regularly appears in the broadcast media and presents a daily Business News slot on LBC at 0730, Monday to Friday. Find Christian on X and LinkedIn.

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All 544 Articles

Italy’s populists will take advantage of this chaos for all it is worth

May 29, 2018

As a spectator sport, Italian politics rarely disappoints. The spectacle of the radical, anti-establishment 5 Star Movement stitching together a plan for government with the far-right League has been gripping and alarming in equal measure. How would sweeping tax cuts sit alongside a massive expansion of welfare? How would markets react to a debt-laden economy [...]
Editor’s Notes: Time to wake up to your own online data dump

March 23, 2018

Having spent the past decade pouring my every opinion and interest on toFacebook, I find myself outraged to discover that the data generated by my self-obsessed oversharing has been used to try and sell me things. Worse, political campaigns have been using my deep data footprint to try and target me with campaign messages. This [...]
‘Trump could be the best president since Reagan’: US ambassador Woody Johnson on trade deals, tariffs, Brexit and London’s ‘surprisingly good’ restaurants

March 13, 2018

Six months into his term as Donald Trump’s ambassador to the UK, and newly installed south of the river in a fortress-like embassy, Woody Johnson is enjoying himself. “I’m loving it,” he tells me, in his first interview with a business newspaper since arriving in London last August. At a reception for journalists in the [...]
Editor’s Notes: MPs should summon the hedge funds if they want to understand Carillion, Carney’s catty comment and RBS’s robot

February 23, 2018

In their quest to find out what happened to doomed outsourcing giantCarillion, MPs are asking the right questions but they’re not necessarily addressing them to the right people. This week the committee investigating Carillion’s collapse grilled accountancy firms KPMG andDeloitte, but while the beancounters can provide valuable insight into the final hours of Carillion’s life, [...]
Editor’s Notes: Business leaders are more relaxed about Brexit than you think, the UK is still attracting international students and we should all tune in to Positively Noel

February 16, 2018

Businesses seem to be reasonably well represented in the Brexit debate, thanks to the muscle of groups such as the CBI, IoD and British Chambers of Commerce. However, the problem these organisations tend have is that they to settle on a single position despite representing firms of different sizes, spanning different sectors and with a [...]
Editor’s Notes: The City has its Brexit optimists – are they complacent or correct?

February 2, 2018

This week I attended a small dinner at which some of the most significant financial institutions in the City were represented. Over the course of the evening, and to my surprise, it became clear that all but one of the 12 guests was an enthusiastic Brexiteer. Many of them worked at companies whose public interventions [...]
Editor’s Notes: Theresa May can benefit from taking on Corbyn’s anti-business agenda, Trump’s thumbs up to data and the ONS’ telecoms glitch

January 19, 2018

Theresa May has never been an enthusiastic defender of free-market capitalism, much to the frustration of many in business. However, to give credit where it’s due, the PM pushed back quite hard against Jeremy Corbyn’s latest assault on private business, which was sparked by the collapse of Carillion. After the Labour leader stumbled his way [...]
Editor’s Notes: Predictions are for fools, but here are a few to mull over, may the bitcoin ride continue in 2018 and the best statistic of the year

December 22, 2017

Winston Churchill once said “I always avoid prophesying beforehand because it is much better to prophesy after the event has already taken place.” Wise words, which were roundly ignored at a City lunch this week where we went around the table to offer our predictions for 2018. Contributions ranged from the sensible to the more [...]
Editor’s Notes: Bitcoin is starting to resemble tulip bulbs in a 17th century Dutch market, entrepreneurs are getting on with Brexit and the LSEG’s breakdown of trust

December 1, 2017

Gordon Gekko, the legendary character played by Michael Douglas in Wall Street, delivers a lesson on speculation in the film’s sequel with the help of some framed tulip bulbs. “Tulip mania,” he declared, “is the greatest bubble story of all time.” Gekko references the 17th century trend for tulips – a trend that soon generated [...]
Editor’s Notes: The Russians swung the Brexit vote? Pull the other one, Legatum Institute experts on the theory of change and City A.M.’s 3,000th edition is coming soon

November 3, 2017

We have a problem with the Russian state. Senior spooks say the Kremlin’s agents are more active in this country now than at any point since the height of the Cold War. Out of the shadows, Putin’s interference is brazen – including the Kremlin-funded ‘news’ outlets RT and Sputnik – home of conspiracy theorists, pro-Russia [...]

Reform fundraiser Nick Candy offloads £270m mansion in ‘biggest sale ever’

Chelsea suffer biggest financial loss in Premier League history

Friends of The Whisky Exchange launches to reward customers

By: Christian May

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