Andrew Gowers was appointed editor of the Financial Times in October 2001. He left this post in November 2005 due to disagreements over strategy with the Financial Times’ owner, Pearson PLC. In March 2012 he was appointed Director of External Relations at the Association for Financial Markets in Europe. As for June 2015 he is Global Head of Corporate Affairs in Trafigura responsible for a team of seven communications and engagement professionals.
After graduating from Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, Gowers began his journalistic career in 1980 when he joined Reuters as a graduate trainee. In 1981, he was appointed Brussels correspondent and in 1982 he became Zurich correspondent.
He joined the Financial Times in 1983 on the foreign desk in London. In 1984, he became agriculture correspondent and in 1985 he was appointed commodities editor. Two years later, he became Middle East editor, in 1990 features editor, and in 1992, foreign editor. He was appointed deputy editor in 1994.
From July 1997, he spent 15 months as acting editor while the editor, Richard Lambert, was in New York to launch the new US edition of the Financial Times. In January 1999, Andrew Gowers was appointed founding editor of a new German language business newspaper, Financial Times Deutschland, a joint venture between the Financial Times Group and Gruner und Jahr, one of Germany’s leading newspaper and magazine publishers. FT Deutschland launched in February 2000.
On Friday 2nd December 2005 he was commissioned by Gordon Brown to lead an independent review of intellectual property rights in the UK, known as the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property. Amongst other things, this review was set up to consider the implications of extending the copyright on sound recordings in the UK.
In March 2006, he was appointed head of corporate communications, advertising and brand & marketing strategy for Lehman Brothers in Europe.
Andrew Gowers is co-author of a biography of Yasser Arafat published in 1990, which was republished in an updated version in 2003. He has recently published the Gowers Review.
