Liam Halligan is a leading economist, author, columnist and broadcaster – who also has extensive business experience. Since 2003, he has written his multiple award-winning weekly Economic Agenda column in The Sunday Telegraph – which enjoys a large domestic and international following and has been recognised with a British Press Award, the highest prize in UK print journalism. Widely read in the City and other financial capitals, Liam has a reputation for prescient economic predictions, often made against conventional wisdom. In March 2021, with UK inflation at just 0.7%, way below the Bank of England’s 2% target, Liam laid out the reasons in Economic Agenda why “inflation could soon surge” – a forecast senior policymakers publicly derided. A year later, inflation had indeed surged...
Liam Halligan is a leading economist, author, columnist and broadcaster – who also has extensive business experience. Since 2003, he has written his multiple award-winning weekly Economic Agenda column in The Sunday Telegraph – which enjoys a large domestic and international following and has been recognised with a British Press Award, the highest prize in UK print journalism.
Widely read in the City and other financial capitals, Liam has a reputation for prescient economic predictions, often made against conventional wisdom. In March 2021, with UK inflation at just 0.7%, way below the Bank of England’s 2% target, Liam laid out the reasons in Economic Agenda why “inflation could soon surge” – a forecast senior policymakers publicly derided. A year later, inflation had indeed surged to 7%, a 30-year high, before pushing to a 40-year high in the aftermath of the escalation of war in Ukraine.
Similarly, in July 2024, when Keir Starmer was widely-described as a “lucky general” following that month’s landslide election win, Economic Agenda explained why pressing fiscal constraints and looming bond market turmoil meant “Starmer’s all-conquering administration could be a one-term government”. Several months later, government debt costs indeed began to spiral upward, culminating in the worst bond market turbulence since the 2008 financial crisis and persistent questions about Labour’s economic competence.
Aside from his writing on economics, Liam also created the Telegraph’s hugely popular Planet Normal podcast, covering broader political and societal themes, which he co-presents each week with fellow Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson. Planet Normal regularly appears in the Apple news podcast top ten global rankings.
Liam’s latest book – Home Truths: The UK’s Chronic Housing Shortage – How it Happened, Why it Matters and How to Solve it – was published in 2021 to rave reviews. The Times described the book as “vivid and lucid, a brilliantly written gem” while the housing charity Shelter said Home Truths was “full of eloquence and moral clarity – a call to arms for politicians and campaigners of all parties and none”.
Along with his roles at the Telegraph, Liam also writes regularly for The Spectator and has appeared countless times on flagship BBC shows – including Question Time, Any Questions and Today, as well as on Sky News, CNBC, Times Radio, Bloomberg TV and many others.
He previously featured three times a week on CNN-Talk – analysing global political and economic news on live television, for a worldwide television audience.
Earlier in his career, Liam was based in Russia – where he wrote an influential column in The Moscow Times, while covering Russia and the Former Soviet Union for The Economist and The Economist Intelligence Unit. He then became Political Correspondent for The Financial Times (based in Parliament) before spending almost a decade leading the economics and business coverage at Channel 4 News.
Since then, Liam has continued to research, write and present hard-hitting Dispatches documentaries for Channel 4 – and has won the Wincott Business Broadcast Award a record four times, as well being twice recognised as the World Leadership Forum Business Broadcaster of the Year. He has, for many years, served on the judging panel of the Royal Television Society journalism awards.
Alongside his extensive media experience, Liam was a founder board member and partner of a leading asset-management company focussed on emerging markets, helping to manage a $4-5 billion portfolio of investment on behalf of highly sophisticated private and sovereign institutional investors from the US, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. He has extensive board room experience and maintains an active pro bono portfolio, not least in the education sector, currently serving as a governor of both The John Lyon School (which he attended on a scholarship) and Harrow School.
Liam is a very experienced and sought-after public speaker – who combines widely recognised expertise across economics, finance and politics with personality and humour. He has given keynote addresses to numerous high-level audiences, in person and on-line, in both conference and after-dinner settings, headlining events run by Thomson Reuters, Euromoney, JCB, the CFA Institute, Deutsche Bank and the St Petersburg International Economic Forum among many others.
He has also hosted an array of conferences, often on complex economic and financial issues, for clients ranging from the Association of British Insurers, The Financial Conduct Authority, Eversheds, Microsoft, the Telegraph Festival of Business and the OECD’s flagship 50th Anniversary Forum.
As a leading economics journalist and recognised policy expert, Liam has been called upon to testify in front of numerous committees of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords – on subjects ranging from housing to global central banking, UK trade policy, the future of the BBC and “Britain’s digital divide”.
But his range of experience and expertise, as both a speaker and convener, extends beyond economic and business themes, to include diplomatic and geo-strategic issues too – relating to the UK, US, Europe and beyond. He has a particularly deep knowledge of the post-Communist world, emerging markets more broadly and global energy markets.
Liam holds a first-class BSc. (Econ) degree from the University of Warwick and an MPhil (Econ) from St Antony’s College, Oxford University. He sits on the Advisory Board of the Social Market Foundation, a Westminster-based think-tank, and the Economics Department of The University of Warwick.
A citizen of both the UK and the Republic of Ireland, Liam is listed in Who’s Who, De Bretts and the Dictionary of International Biography.
“Liam Halligan is the best economics journalist of his generation – his writing is always prescient, vivid and lucid”.
Lord Nigel Lawson, former Chancellor
“Liam Halligan is a one-off – a card-carrying economist, with high-level political access, who can explain complex issues in readable, vivid prose”.
Andrew Neil, Times Radio presenter
“Liam Halligan is required reading for anyone who wants to understand how our housing market – and the broader UK economy – really works”
Merryn Somerset Webb, Financial Times
“Many people claim to speak truth to power but very few actually do. Liam Halligan is one of the few – a great and fearless truth-teller”.
Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times
“What Liam Halligan doesn’t know about the UK economy – and economics more generally –isn’t worth knowing”.
Iain Dale, LBC presenter.
“Liam Halligan isn’t only a brilliant journalist. He is an economist of genuine substance, with deep and widely-recognised expertise, who can explain complex ideas to a broad audience better than anyone I know”
Konstantin Kisin, presenter, Triggernometry podcast
“Liam Halligan is an economist I respect enormously, whose work I have followed closely for many years”.
Lord David Owen, former Foreign Secretary and Independent Peer
