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26 January 2010
Sheffield graduate talks about career as chief economist at Goldman Sachs
Source: The Daily Telegraph, 26 January 2010
A profile of Jim O’Neill, Chief economist at Goldman Sachs, and graduate of the University of Sheffield.
When Mr O'Neill was appointed in 2001 to, arguably, the most influential economist's job in the private sector – head of economic research at Goldman Sachs – he knew he needed to come up with something to define his career.
"Goldman Sachs quite rightly puts an enormous amount of importance on this job," he said at that time. "I thought, 'Oh, my God, I've got to put my own imprint on this department for the future.'"
What he came up with was the acronym BRIC to describe the shifting balance of global economic power from the West towards Brazil, Russia, India and China. Since then the word has entered common parlance, and Mr O'Neill has entered the global conference circuit as one of the most sought after economic commentators on the planet.
Goldman Sachs' offices in London and New York receive up to eight invitations a day for Mr O'Neill to attend conferences and seminars on the developing global economy, and in particular the BRIC countries. In a stroke, the acronym BRIC catapulted Mr O'Neill from a well respected, possibly even the world's leading, commentator on foreign exchange to the man of the moment on global economics.
The irony is that before he had invented the term BRIC, Mr O'Neill had only been to one of the four countries, China.
Mr O'Neill grew up in Gatley in Manchester. From there he went to Sheffield University to study geography and economics. He dropped the geography, but still shone at economics.
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