John co-heads both our Macroeconomics and Financial Markets team, and our Expert witness and litigation support practice areas. He plays a major part in all of our conjunctural and other economic analysis. 

He has a broad experience, having worked in academia, international and then national policymaking, and in investment banking. Before advising HM Treasury during the 2008 Global Financial Crisis and its aftermath, and co-founding the firm in 2009, John was Global Chief Economist and then Senior Economic Policy Advisor at Lehman Brothers. This followed almost twenty years at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris, where he was successively Head of International Forecasting and Policy Analysis and Editor of the OECD Economic Outlook; Deputy Director for Social Affairs, Manpower and Education, and finally Chef de Cabinet to the Secretary-General. 

Prior to that he spent nearly ten years at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Cambridge, and was also a Fellow of St. John’s College. 

John holds an undergraduate degree from the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and a doctorate from the University of Oxford. He has published widely.

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Preston is the co-founder and Managing Partner of Independent Economics. He leads the organisation on all aspects of strategy, team leadership and operations, and key client and assignment management across its global network.

An experienced business leader, Preston also works substantively on all projects, and has written on and led projects on subjects ranging from the decarbonisation of industry to ESG, digitalisation, and technology, including importantly a specialist series on new technologies that stand to have practical application in industries over the coming ten years. 

Before co-founding the organisation in 2009 he spent ten years at the industrial coalface serving in various senior roles on corporate strategy, business development, communications, and marketing.

Preston holds a BA and an MSc (Maitrise Sc. Ec.) in Economics with French from the University of Sussex and the University of Grenoble, and an MBA from Imperial College, London.