John Plender has been a senior editorial writer and columnist at the Financial Times since 1981, an assignment he combined until recently with current affairs broadcasting for the BBC and Channel Four.

After taking his degree at Oxford University, he joined Deloitte, Plender, Griffiths & Co in the City of London in 1967, qualifying as a chartered accountant in 1970. He then moved into journalism and became financial editor of The Economist in 1974, where he remained until joining the British Foreign Office policy planning staff in 1980.

A former member of the London Stock Exchange.s quality of markets advisory committee and past chairman of Pensions and Investment Research Consultants (PIRC), a leading corporate governance consultancy and shareholder activist, John Plender is currently a non-executive director of Quintain PLC, a FTSE 250 company.

Plender served on the UK Company Law Review steering group and has consulted on corporate governance for the International Finance Corporation, the private sector investing and lending arm of the World Bank. He is a member of the Private Sector Advisory Group created by the World Bank and the OECD to assist developing countries improve their corporate governance practices. He also chairs the advisory council of the Centre For The Study Of Financial Innovation, a London and New York based think thank, and is a member of the advisory board of the Association of Corporate Treasurers.

Previous books include Going Off The Rails - Global Capital And The Crisis Of Legitimacy (John Wiley, 2003); A Stake In The Future (Nicholas Brealey, 1997); The Square Mile with Paul Wallace (Hutchinson, 1984); and That.s The Way The Money Goes (Andre Deutsch, 1982).

John Plender was the winner of the Wincott Foundation senior prize for excellence in financial journalism in 1994.

Avinash D. Persaud's career spans finance, academia and public policy. He is currently President, Intelligence Capital Limited, a financial advisory boutique specializing in the management of liquidity, risk and investment portfolios. Previously he was Investment Director of GAM London Limited; managing director of State Street Bank & Trust; Global Head of Currency and Commodity Research, J. P. Morgan and director, Debt Research, Union Bank of Switzerland. Persaud was elected Director, of the Global Association of Risk Professionals. Between 1989 and 1999, Persaud was ranked in the top three of analysts for the major institutional investor surveys. He is the only person to have won both major awards in international finance: the Jacques de Larosiere (First, 2000) from the Institute of International Finance, Washington and the Amex Bank Award (Bronze, 1994).

Persaud is Fellow and previously, Mercer Memorial Chair in Commerce at Gresham College. He is Visiting Fellow at the Cambridge Endowment for Research in Finance at the Judge Institute, Cambridge and Member of the Scientific Committee of the Geneva Report on the World Economy. He is known for developing the Risk Appetite Index, EMU Calculator and developing theories of Liquidity Black Holes and what has been described as the Persaud Paradox of Risk Management. His work has been published in policy-related journals: International Finance, Oxford Economic Policy Review, Central Banking, Foreign Affairs, Geneva Reports, and World Economics. . He has given a number of Distinguished Lectures at Universities and Central Banks. He was elected Member of Council of the Royal Economics Society.

Persaud is an Expert Member of the UK Cabinet.s Committee on Public Sector Information, was Visiting Scholar, IMF and is Visiting Scholar, European Central Bank. He was Distinguished Visitor, Republic of Singapore and is Special Advisor to the Deputy Prime Minister of Barbados. Persaud is a Member of Council of the London School of Economics and Political Science and of the Overseas Development Institute. He is a Member of the Finance Committee of Corum Family (2005-), the leading childcare and policy group. Unusually for someone based in the private sector, he has addressed on a number of occasions official meetings of Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors of G7, G20 and Commonwealth nations.