Dan Davies and Darren Sharma on finance, risk, offshore research, and the industry as we see it.
Bank of England, then seventeen years as a sell-side equity analyst. FT contributor. Author of The Unaccountability Machine and Lying for Money. His Substack, Back of Mind, has over 10,000 subscribers.
Managing Director since 2015. Heads equity research and quality assurance.
Regulatory policy analyst. Worked on the 1995 Mexico crisis and the first Financial Stability Report.
JPMorgan Cazenove, Credit Suisse and BNP Paribas (Exane), among others. Member of teams that won the Extel and Institutional Investor European awards.
Writes a weekly newsletter on bank regulation from an investment perspective.
University of Oxford, BA PPE (First). London Business School, MSc Finance (Distinction).
The Unaccountability Machine (Profile, 2024), longlisted for the FT Business Book of the Year. Lying for Money (Profile, 2018).
Financial Times and FT Alphaville. Also the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Frontline's Managing Director, in the FT.
Dan writes regularly for the FT's Alphaville on finance, regulation, and institutional failure.
Dan's newsletter on accountability, systems, and what goes wrong when organisations stop thinking. Over 10,000 subscribers.
Sorry for the non appearance of Friday’s post last week – I had high hopes of doing another “Beer Tasting Notes” on the concept of “autopoiesis” based on some interesting discussion in comments. But I was travelling, and it’s almost always a forlorn hope to get anything done on travel days. I was actually at the Kilkenomics Festival, so as always, it’s an investment in the raw material for…
Read on Substack → Nov 4, 2026I’m writing this the day after the midterms, and, albeit with significantly happier mood music, I am still committed to my analysis from two years ago – that it is only sensible to react to the fact of the victory, not to guess at its meaning . It was a bad year to be an incumbent facing inflation in 2024 and it’s a bad year to be an incumbent facing inflation in 2026. The irony is quite…
Read on Substack → Oct 30, 2026This is going to be a short post, because I am deep in the weeds doing book edits. (If I haven’t sent you something I promised, that’s why, sorry and I’ll be right on to it! ).
Read on Substack →