Jo Johnson

Jo Johnson (born 1971) is a columnist and Associate Editor of the Financial Times newspaper.

Family, early life and schooling

An award-winning English journalist and author based in London, Johnson is the youngest of four children born to environmentalist and former Conservative MEP Stanley Johnson and artist Charlotte Johnson Wahl (née Fawcett), the daughter of Sir James Fawcett, a prominent barrister and president of the European Commission of Human Rights. He is the younger brother of Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, Rachel Johnson, the writer and journalist, and Leo Johnson, the entrepreneur and film-maker. On his father's side Johnson is great-grandson of Ali Kemal Bey, a liberal Turkish journalist and the interior minister in the government of Damat Ferid Pasha, Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, who was murdered during the Turkish War of Independence. During World War I, his grandfather and great aunt were recognised as British subjects and took their grandmother's maiden name of Johnson.

He began his schooling in Brussels, at the European School in Uccle, before attending The Hall School in Hampstead, London, Ashdown House School in East Sussex, and then Eton College. In 1991, he went up to Balliol College, Oxford to read Modern History. He won the Hollway Scholarship at Balliol, edited Isis, the Oxford University student magazine, and was awarded a First Class degree in both Honour Moderations and Finals.

A fluent French speaker, he went on to postgraduate study on the continent and has degrees from two further leading European universities, gaining an MBA from INSEAD in 2000 and a licence spéciale with distinction in 1995 from the Institut d’Etudes Européennes at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, where he was a Wiener-Anspach Fellow.

Journalistic career

Johnson joined the Financial Times in 1997, after working as an investment banker at Deutsche Bank, and has had two foreign postings, as Paris correspondent between 2001-2005, and then as South Asia Bureau Chief based in New Delhi from 2005 until 2008.

Johnson is Head of the Lex Column, one of the most influential positions in British financial journalism. Previous 'Heads of Lex' include Nigel Lawson, former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Martin Taylor, former chief executive of Barclays Bank, and Richard Lambert, director-general of the Confederation of British Industry. In a press release, the Financial Times and Bloomberg said the Lex Column would appear on the financial channel every weekday. The daily video clips would also be available on the FT.com website.

Jo Johnson speaking at the British Museum

In April 2009, Johnson was named Foreign Journalist of the Year (Print) in India's leading media awards, the Indian Express Excellence in Journalism Awards. His books include The Man Who Tried To Buy the World (Penguin, 2003), which was published in France as Une faillite française by Albin Michel in 2002, and a forthcoming work on finance to be published in the spring of 2010.

A regular commentator on radio and television, he frequently appears as a moderator of panel discussions and as a speaker on business, economic and financial affairs. He has received awards from a range of organisations, including most recently Amnesty International, the Foreign Press Association, the Society of Publishers in Asia and The Indian Express’s 2009 Excellence in Journalism Awards.

Personal life

Jo Johnson lives in Camden with his wife, Amelia Gentleman, a journalist for The Guardian and the daughter of artist and designer David Gentleman. They have two children, Rose and William.

External links

• Jo Johnson's column on the Financial Times website
• Jo Johnson chairing fund-raising discussion at Christie's
• The Lex Column