Jim O’Neill,
Goldman Sachs

Jim is Head of Global Economic Research for Goldman Sachs, and has been in this position since September 2001.

In this role, Jim oversees all the firm’s economic research and the output of its team all around the world.

Jim received his Ph.D. in 1982 from the University of Surrey after graduating in Economics from Sheffield University in 1978. His Ph.D. thesis was entitled An Empirical Study of the OPEC Surplus and its Disposal.

After a brief spell with Bank of America in 1983, Jim joined International Treasury Management, a division of Marine Midland Bank.

In 1988, Jim joined Swiss Bank Corporation(SBC) to start off a fixed income research group in London, helping to pioneer research on the ECU bond market. In 1991, he became Head of Research, globally for SBC.

Jim joined Goldman Sachs in October 1995 as a Partner, Co-Head of Global Economics and Chief Currency Economist.

Jim has spent much of his 25 year career analysing the world’s foreign exchange market, for which he is perhaps best known.

Jim is also the creator of the acronym BRICs and together with his colleagues he has published much research about BRICs which has become synonymous with the emergence of Brazil, Russia India and China as the growth opportunities of the future.

Jim is a board member of the Royal Economic Society in the UK. He is also on the board of the European think tank Bruegel, and on the board Itinera, a Belgium think tank. He recently joined the UK-India Round Table.

Away from the firm, Jim is heavily involved in a variety of UK educational charities. He is one of the founding trustees as well as currently Chairman of the London based charity SHINE. Jim is also Chairman of Goldman Sachs European Charity Committee and a Trustee of PiggyBankKids.

He also served as a non-executive director of Manchester United before it returned to private ownership in 2005.


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