Russell Napier Keynote Speaker

Russell Napier is an independent financial market strategist, researcher and author, specialising in issues impacting global equity markets. He co-founded ERIC, an online investment research platform, and The Library of Mistakes, a non-profit library specialising in business and finance history. He is a speaker on economics and financial history.

Previously, Russell was the investment strategist for CLSA Asia Pacific Markets, where he contributed to the development and scope of CLSA’s equity research. He authored global macro report “The Solid Ground,” originally published by CLSA and now published independently.

Russell’s career in investment began in 1989. He worked at Baillie Gifford in Edinburgh, before moving to Hong Kong in 1995 to work for CLSA as an Asian equity strategist. Russell is Chairman of the Mid Wynd International Investment Trust, a London listed investment trust. He is an investment advisory committee member of Cerno Capital and Kennox Asset Management, two fund management companies.

His book Anatomy of a Bear: Learning from Wall Street’s Four Great Bottoms (2005) was published to critical and commercial acclaim, named a ‘cult classic’ by the Financial Times. His upcoming book ‘THE ASIAN FINANCIAL CRISIS 1995–98 – Birth of the Age of Debt”, due to be published in July 2021, will follow Russell’s personal journey during the Asian Financial Crisis, as he wrote daily for institutional investors about an increasingly uncertain future. Relying on contemporaneous commentary, it charts the mistakes and successes of investors in the battle for investment survival in Asia in those heady years.

In 2014, Russell founded The Library of Mistakes, a non-profit library specialising in business and financial history, with branches in India Switzerland and Edinburgh, where it’s based. He is Keeper of the Library of Mistakes.

In 2004, he created a course for finance professionals at the Edinburgh Business School called ‘A Practical History of Financial Markets’, which he continues to run through the university and also independently. In 2021 the course will be launched in an online only education version.

Russell studied law at Queen’s University Belfast and Magdalene College Cambridge. He is a Fellow of The CFA Society of the UK and is an Honorary Professor at both Heriot-Watt University and The University of Stirling.

Russell has run his own charity since 2002 which provides scholarships for people to attend university who would otherwise be unable to finance their studies. He is a part owner of a brewery in Northern Ireland, grows his own organic vegetables, trundles round Scotland in a 1961 VW campervan, frightens fish with flies, and reads too much financial history.

Speaking Topics

• Global Macros Strategy Outlook & Investment Implications
• 21 Lessons From Financial History
• Capital Management in An Age of Financial Repression
• How Money Is Made & Destroyed
• Anatomy of The Bear: Lessons From Wall Street’s Four Great Bottoms
• The Asian Financial Crisis: Lessons For Investors