Long story short: Breakingviews toasts 25 years

LONDON, Nov 12 (Reuters Breakingviews) – Twenty-five years ago, breathtaking new technology threatened to upend industries and alter societies. Exuberant investors conjured up vast fortunes based on irrational valuations of unprofitable companies. Escorted into capital markets by eager investment bankers, chief executives allocated huge sums of capital to build a vast industrial framework designed to attract throngs of customers. The same spirit of invention and ambition inspired a handful of plucky journalists to start a new type of publication to inform and entertain these merchants of capitalism.
A quarter of a century later, the echoes of financial history are impossible to ignore. Over the intervening period of myriad rises and falls, Breakingviews has survived and thrived, evidenced by this sampling of 25 columns to commemorate 25 years of being in business.
Sign up here.
Any landmark anniversary invites reflection on just how much has changed. When Breakingviews hosted a glitzy party at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum to introduce its online commentary service, every hand held a BlackBerry; Apple, worth just $5 billion, was heralding the Power Mac G4 Cube and its 64 megabytes of random-access memory. It would be another seven years before the world-changing iPhone made its debut. Google’s search engine hadn’t yet turned two. Mark Zuckerberg was a few years away from enrolling at, and then dropping out of, Harvard University. JPMorgan announced plans to unite with Chase as Royal Bank of Scotland stormed the gates of NatWest Bank. Enron inspired fawning business school case studies. Venerable publisher Time Warner agreed to be acquired by America Online for $160 billion. Crowds flocked to see “Gladiator” at the cinema, buy Coldplay’s first album and watch England win the inaugural Six Nations Rugby Championship.
While these dramatic events unfolded, Hugo Dixon, Rob Cox and Jonathan Ford drafted a business plan and a set of editorial principles that would last. Demand for informed analysis of the important financial and economic issues of the day is as strong as ever. Time-starved readers recognised the value of short, punchy insights long before Twitter compressed thoughts into 280 characters and large language models began converting everything into bullet points. Rigorous, unbiased and reported commentary remains a competitive strength. And despite the often weighty and complex subject matter, Breakingviews prose remains clear and lively.
Breakingviews has evolved, too. After becoming part of Reuters in 2009, it branched out. A beachhead in Hong Kong led to an Asian edition to fortify European and North American hubs. Today, more than 30 columnists, editors and production specialists provide round-the-clock judgments about what is shaping industries worldwide. Interactive graphics, events, videos, predictions and podcasting all became part of the package. The latest development is The Big View, a daily flagship column to showcase the most original commentary with a little extra oomph.
The subject matter has shifted with the times, as well as the interests of columnists and readers. Rampant mergers and acquisitions and private equity buyouts gave way to the global financial crisis, which shaped much of what followed: a wave of bank regulation, extraordinary interventions by central banks, widespread political upheaval, and war. Seemingly unstoppable forces of liberalisation and globalisation have gone into reverse. The U.S. president is erecting barriers to trade, tilting the scales of commerce, and flouting fundamental principles of law and democracy.
Other crises have punctuated the intervening period. The euro zone conflagration that kicked off in 2010 was followed by Britain’s decision to leave the European Union. Four years later, the Covid pandemic brought the world to a halt, forcing governments to take extraordinary financial measures. Just as a recovery took hold, Russian President Vladimir Putin led an invasion into Ukraine, turbocharging global inflation that rippled from Silicon Valley to Switzerland.
The turbulent history of the past 25 years doubtless shapes how columnists consider what might happen next. Of course, knowing full well that past performance is not indicative of future performance also has engrained a healthy scepticism at Breakingviews about the prevailing wisdom and the hyperbole that often flows from boardrooms, trading floors and other corridors of power. The same doubts about groupthink are a reminder to resist the gloom when fear tramples greed.
Breakingviews consistently manages to see around corners. One of the first views called out the financial folly at Vivendi, the French conglomerate then led by Jean-Marie Messier, for buying Seagram’s movie and music empire. In 2011, when Apple’s market value was just $340 billion, one columnist foresaw it outpacing Exxon Mobil and others to be the first $1 trillion U.S. company – seven years ahead of time. AT&T was among those identified as a ripe target for an activist investor, not long before one came knocking. Breakingviews raised questions about Gautam Adani’s empire long before short-sellers descended on the Indian tycoon and highlighted Donald Trump’s suspect business credentials as far back as 2004, when the real estate developer was reinventing himself as a reality-TV star.
At times, however, even seemingly sound financial logic has proved a less reliable guide. The first Breakingviews piece on bitcoin declared the nascent cryptocurrency to be “decidedly frothy” – at $9. A December 2007 defence of Dick Fuld’s $50 million pay packet for his stewardship of Lehman Brothers did not age well.
Any attempt to distill 25 years of financial commentary into a mere 25 views is destined to leave a messy cutting-room floor. This selection works from an archive of nearly 60,000 items. It nevertheless offers something of a snapshot of what came before, and in many cases offers insights that stand the test of time.
It also provides a promise of the spirit and values that will guide Breakingviews in the years to come. As stock markets test new highs and the world’s largest companies shovel hundreds of billions of dollars into developing artificial intelligence, the future is as hard to discern in 2025 as it was in 2000. Regardless of how fast or radically things may change, however, continued support from loyal readers will ensure that the aim of providing agenda-setting financial insight stays the same.
Follow Peter Thal Larsen on Bluesky and LinkedIn.
For more insights like these, click here, opens new tab to try Breakingviews for free.