As the former Editor and Group Content Director for the Independent and Evening Standard, Chris Blackhurst has seen huge changes in the media landscape. From Leveson to social media to foreign ownership he has witnessed the effects of disruption first hand. With knowledge of and stories from the corridors of power in politics, media, and commerce, he provides a view of where power lies, the likely outcome of key events, and how to communicate your message.
View / Submit“His talk provoked as many questions as any we can remember”
National Association of British & Irish Millers
Chris Blackhurst is an award-winning writer and commentator. He is a former editor of The Independent, and for ten years was City editor of the Evening Standard. Before that he worked for The Sunday Times, on its business pages and Insight investigative team.
Starting his career covering business for Euromoney, Chris moved to the Independent as Westminster correspondent. He then became deputy editor before taking the same role at the Express and Sunday Express. He was then City Editor of the Evening Standard, covering key business news for London and meeting some of the biggest names in commerce. Shortly after the Evening Standard and the Independent became part of the same group, he was appointed Editor of the latter.
Chris’ journalism has appeared in many of the world’s major publications, newspapers, and magazines. For twenty years, he conducted the main interviews in Management Today magazine with senior business and political figures. He is also an experienced TV and radio broadcaster.
Chris was the executive director of CT Group for four years. He was ranked in the Top Ten for UK Crisis and Reputational advice by PR Week.
As City editor of the Evening Standard, he covered the banking crisis and its aftermath day after day. His task was to report the drama and the markets both for practitioners working in the investment and financial services industries, and for the wider public. He did this with distinction, earning him the title of London Press Club Business Journalist of the Year. The Guardian described him as “the consummate insider, with a network of high-level contacts in the City, including chief executives and the powerful financial PRs who control access to them.”
His first book Too Big To Jail: Inside HSBC, the Mexican drug cartels and the greatest banking scandal of the century, considered how 'the world's local bank' found itself enabling Mexico's leading drugs cartel, and the biggest drugs trafficking organisation in the world, to launder cash through the bank's branch network and systems.
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