John Ridding

After 35 years with the Financial Times, the second half of that period as CEO, John Ridding has become almost as much an institution of British journalism as the venerable newspaper he has served since 1988. Here, John talks of the life at Bedales and Oxford University that preceded his career as well as some of the professional achievements that have studded that career at home and abroad. He makes a particularly interesting comparison between his alma mater and the FT – “A news organisation is sometimes viewed from the outside as an institution for lone wolves but here there still exists that wonderful combination of the essential individual spirit and the collective ‘work of each for weal of all’ culture that was at the heart of Bedales life and is still incredibly important to the FT.”

The class of 1983 at Bedales contained some notably high achievers – retail gurus, best-selling authors, renowned architects and leading figures from the cultural arena have all made a public mark since leaving the school 40 years ago. John Ridding, however, another to have scaled the heights of his chosen profession as CEO of the Financial Times, plays down the idea of an especially golden generation: “I always thought that most years at Bedales had their share of interesting people,” he demurs. “Ours was certainly one but I wouldn’t necessarily single it out.”

John’s path to Steep began in Kettering, Northamptonshire, where his father worked in insurance. “Early childhood didn’t feature anything too dramatic for me until Dad got a job out in Malaysia,” he relates. “That meant boarding school and my parents were keen that my sister Helen and I should go to the same place at the same time. In the 1970s, there weren’t too many viable co-ed options so Bedales was an obvious choice.”

Between his initial visit to Bedales in 1976 (“I have a clear memory of seeing the orchard and the Library for the first time”) and his first term as a boarder a few months later, John had manged to ruin the immediate prospect of success at his great sporting passion – football. “I broke two of my fingers just before I got there and, almost immediately after I arrived, I promptly crushed two more fingertips in a jack in the cycle shed, which made for a bumpy beginning – especially when you throw in a bit of natural home-sickness as well,” he says. “Football really was my great love and I wasn’t a bad player, which was fine at Bedales as long as you didn’t give the impression of trying too hard to be good. There were some really talented sportsmen at the school – Harry Langford (1977-1982) in the year above was one – and we ended up having a pretty good run. Beating Winchester – away – was a highlight and possibly their worst sporting nightmare come true – to lose to Bedales.”

Friendships that have stood the test of time were forged from John’s early days at Bedales. “Just about the first person I encountered at school was the improbably-named Wycliffe Stutchbury and he remains someone of whom I see a lot today,” he reflects. “The same applies to Kate Summerscale (1978-1983), (whose brilliant books I spell-check), Hal Currey (1979-1983) and others….they were always a wonderfully varied bunch at school with quite an original view of life." 

“Bedales was a school that gave its students a lot of freedom and it was therefore their responsibility to find their own way to make the most of the many opportunities around them,” John continues. “This was especially true in the classroom, where teaching tended to be focused on learning rather more than passing exams; if you wanted to coast, you could, but motivation had to come from within. In my opinion, that’s a great strength and in my own case, it definitely landed well with the career in journalism that I subsequently followed, where you have to be able to sort yourself out to some degree.”

A number of John’s connections at school were established and reinforced through a shared passion for music, an interest that extended as far as forming a band with some of his close friends. “Music always was a big thing for me,” he acknowledges. “We’ve kept the band going off and on over the years, even after the terribly sad passing of James Wadeson (1976-1983), playing our eclectic brand of R&B. Back in the day, we did a recording session at Chrysalis Records but that was never going to get far after we laughed at their suggested name for the band! The point was that at Bedales, music and the arts in general were permanently in the air and there was lots of encouragement to get involved.”

History, physics and maths were John’s unusually broad set of A Level choices. “Bedales was pretty relaxed about our options and it felt good not to have to pigeon-hole myself as either an arts or a science specialist,” he recalls. “Ruth Whiting (staff, 1963-2000), the Head of History, was one of the biggest influences on me – she went way beyond mere learning and taught with a passion that she wanted to see in her students. When I did seventh term Oxbridge, Graham Banks (staff, 1980-2013) was another important figure, brilliant at getting you to think in a different way.”

PPE at Oxford would be John’s destiny after Bedales, although at this stage he had no concrete ideas about potential future careers. “There was no long-term plan beyond the course itself, which appealed to me because of the various liberal strands of thought that I hoped to find within it,” he admits. “I wasn’t bereft at the prospect of leaving Bedales and Oxford was great – loads to do and interesting to mix with a different group of people, some of whom were having their first experience of life away from home. I’d planned to focus on philosophy, but it was rather narrower than I had imagined, quite focused on logic and semantics, and frankly much harder than I’d reckoned. So I switched to economics and politics – which I guess turned out to be very helpful for my eventual career.”

On graduating, John took a job with Oxford Analytica, a decision that would largely shape his professional life. “My role was terrific training for journalism,” he says. “Working on the Asia-Pacific desk, the remit was to create a series of 800-word articles from interviews with a number of leading academics that would serve as an informed conduit between these great minds and the world of business. We didn’t pay the academics especially well for their time but what I learned about the discipline of writing succinct pieces, paying particular attention to form, analysis and conclusions, was invaluable.”

A colleague of John’s from Oxford Analytica subsequently moved to the Financial Times, from where he regularly waxed lyrical on the newspaper. “I was sufficiently inspired to write a long essay to the FT about why they should take me on,” John remembers. “The reply was a lot more concise – “Dear John, you had better come and see us”. Somehow, I convinced them and I started in a lowly role on the world desk in 1988, taking wire stories to editors to check we were onto them.”

It did not take long for John to make his mark. “Quite early on I was asked whether I fancied becoming the paper’s South Korea correspondent and despite arriving in a brutally cold winter with a daily diet of demonstrations and tear gas I found that I absolutely loved it,” he says. “I think it suited my temperament because the job needed a self-starter’s mentality and there was such a broad range to write about – politics, economics, arts and the ever-present threat of North Korea."

By 2003, John had risen to become editor and publisher of the Financial Times in Asia, as well as chairman of Pearson (the FT’s parent company) in Asia. It was now that he led the launch of the FT’s Asia edition in 2003 and the development of its Chinese language website, which has more than two million users and is the leading international source of business news in China.

“When I landed in Hong Kong to get the Asia edition started, the prospects for success looked dim,” John reflects. “This was the time of the SARS epidemic, the streets were empty, hotel occupancy was down to 4% and the city looked as if it were dying. We all owed so much to Marjorie Scardino, the dynamic Texan CEO of Pearson at the time, who refused to let a virus stand in our way and encouraged us to keep the show on the road.”

The time eventually arrived for John to put aside his reporter’s note-pad and electronic paraphernalia and focus on the strategic and business aspects of running a newspaper. “Once again, Marjorie Scardino was a great supporter in the next stage of my career at the FT,” John relates. “I was at a point when I wanted to write features, rather than hard news, and business strategy was also becoming a particular interest of mine. The best job to have in that context was and is CEO and when that position became vacant in 2006, I put my hand up and got the job.”

Seventeen years later, John is still in situ. “My colleagues marked my thirty-fifth anniversary at the paper in June by presenting me with a front page from the day I joined,” he says. “The FT is one of those places where people just love their work, largely, I think because of the sense of teamwork that goes with it."

In a world where the future of traditional print journalism is regularly scrutinised and often dismissed, and with fake news and digital deep fakes swirling around us, John remains an articulate advocate for his calling. “We have never needed quality journalism as much as we do today,” he insists. “I’m optimistic about it, especially at the FT. A lot of papers have cut their budgets and played defence in the face of digital disruption; we tend to take a diametrically opposed view of the way forward. We have brilliant journalists, a robust business model and have built a multi-media strategy with audio, video, and data visualisation reinforcing our traditional expertise in text. We now reach more readers and more paying subscribers than at any time in our 135-year history.”

It has been a long, successful and thoroughly satisfying career, one that is nowhere near finished yet, but John is adamant that it has happened by chance, rather than design. “My life has largely been the result of accidental collisions and serendipity, going back as far as my time at Bedales,” he says. “When I look back to those school days, which I do very fondly, I used to think that I wasn’t that bad a student. Recently, though, I was looking through some of my old school reports and now I’m not so sure! Whatever, it was still a hugely important place for me.”

John Ridding was interviewed by James Fairweather in Autumn 2023