Robert Peston and People in Leading Questions

Leading Questions The BBC's business editor Robert Peston meets a variety of business leaders.

Robert Peston is an award-winning broadcaster, journalist and author. He has been the BBC's Business Editor since February 2006.

You can read Robert's full biography here

Robert meets global business leaders who run the multinational companies and corporations which shape all our lives. Each programme will focus on one person at the top of a well known company.

Looking at their businesses – how they run their companies, the problems they face, the skills they need and where they think the economy is heading, the programme also finds time to explore their lifestyles -looking their family life and what they do to relax.

Leading Questions: Paul Walsh

BBC business editor Robert Peston meets Paul Walsh, chief executive of Diageo, the world's biggest drinks company.

He talks of his doubts that imposing a minimum price for alcohol - which is mooted by the Government - will significantly reduce binge drinking and the abuse of alcohol.

Mr Walsh also gives revealing insights into what makes him tick, his love of game hunting in Africa, and why top-end whisky, costing several hundred pounds a bottle, is still selling like hotcakes.

SEE ALSO

• Leading Questions: Sir Win Bischoff(23.31)
• Leading Questions: Hector Sants(23.12)
• Leading Questions: Paul Skinner(23.33)

BBC Press Office

Biographies Robert Peston Business Editor

Last updated August 2008
Category: News
Printable version

Robert Peston is an award-winning broadcaster, journalist and author. He has been the BBC's Business Editor since February 2006.

On 13 September 2007 he exclusively revealed that the Northern Rock was close to collapse and had approached the Bank of England for emergency financial support, an event whose consequences are still reverberating around the City and in Government.

From 2002 to 2005 he was City Editor and assistant editor of The Sunday Telegraph, in charge of its Business and Money sections.

Until September 2000, he was the Financial Times' Financial Editor (in charge of business and financial coverage) and a member of the FT's editorial board as an assistant editor.

At the FT, which he joined in 1991, his previous positions were Political Editor, Banking Editor and head of an investigations unit (which he founded).

Robert Peston's scoop on Northern Rock's financial crisis won the Royal Television Society's Television Journalism 2007 Award for Scoop of the Year and the Wincott Award for Business News/Current Affairs Programme of the Year.

He was Journalist of the Year in the Business Journalism of the Year Awards for 2007/8, and also won in the Scoop category.

In 2007, he won the Work Foundation's Broadcast News Journalism Award and the foundation's Programme of the Year Award (for his File on 4, The Inside Story Of Northern Rock, broadcast on BBC Radio 4).

His blog – which can be found at bbc.co.uk/robertpeston – won the digital media category in the Private Equity and Venture Capital Journalist of the Year Awards.

Robert Peston is a past winner of the Harold Wincott Senior Financial Journalist of the Year Award (2005), the London Press Club's Scoop of the Year Award (2005), Granada Television's What The Papers Say award for investigative journalist of the year (1994) and the Wincott Young Financial Journalist of the year (1986).

In February 2008, Hodder & Stoughton published his latest book, Who Runs Britain? How The Super-Rich Are Changing Our Lives.

In April 2008, BBC Two broadcast Super Rich: The Greed Game, a 60-minute film written and presented by Robert Peston on the causes and consequences of the credit crunch.

He is also the author of Brown's Britain (Short Books, 2005), a biography of Gordon Brown.

Robert Peston is married to the writer Sian Busby. They have two sons.