Sir John Kay, CBE, FBA, FRSE, is one of Britain's leading economists, whose career has spanned the academic world, business and finance, and public affairs. Born in Edinburgh in 1948, he has held chairs at the London Business School, the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics, and has been a Fellow of St John's College, Oxford since 1970, when he was elected to a permanent teaching post at the University of Oxford at the age of 21.
Kay studied at the University of Edinburgh and then at Nuffield College, Oxford, where he worked under James Mirrlees, the future Nobel laureate. He served as the first Research Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, founded the consultancy London Economics in 1986, and in 1996 became the founding Dean of Oxford's Saïd Business School. He was also the first Professor of Management to be elected a Fellow of the British Academy. He has served as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers to the First Minister of Scotland (2007–2011) and chaired the Kay Review of UK Equity Markets and Long-Term Decision Making, which reported to the British government in 2012. Following the United Kingdom's vote to leave the European Union, he was appointed to the Standing Council on Scotland and Europe.
Kay is the author of many influential books, including Foundations of Corporate Success (1993), The Truth About Markets (2003) — named Politics Book of the Year in 2005 — Obliquity (2010), The Long and the Short of It (2009, revised 2016), and Other People's Money (2015), which won the Saltire Prize and was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing. His more recent works include Radical Uncertainty (2020, with former Bank of England Governor Mervyn King), Greed is Dead (2020, with Paul Collier), and his latest book, The Corporation in the 21st Century (2024), which examines how the modern corporation has been transformed by globalisation, financialisation and the rise of intangible assets.
A regular Financial Times columnist for nearly three decades, Kay received the Senior Wincott Award for Financial Journalism in 2011. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (1997), the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2008) and the Academy of Social Sciences (2016). He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2014 for services to economics and was knighted in the 2021 Birthday Honours for services to economics, finance and business.
Jiří Zatloukal, financial journalist at Seznam Zprávy and contributor of PFI Talks, talked with John Kay.