Russell Napier is author of The Solid Ground investment report for institutional investors and co-founder of the investment research portal ERIC- a business he now co-owns with D.C. Thomson.  Russell has worked in the investment business for 35 years and has been advising global institutional investors on asset allocation since 1995. Russell is author of the book Anatomy of The Bear: Lessons From Wall Street’s Four Great Bottoms (in print for almost twenty years and ‘a cult classic’ according to the FT) and is founder and course director of The Practical History of Financial Markets course. The course has run since 2004 and is now available on campus at Edinburgh Business School, in a two and a half day in-person executive version in London, and also online.

He is a member of the investment advisory committees of three fund management companies, Cerno Capital, Kennox Asset Management and Bay Capital. He is part owner of both Cerno and Kennox.

In 2014 Russell founded the charitable venture The Library of Mistakes, a business and financial history library in Edinburgh that now has branches in India and Switzerland. Plans to open libraries in London, Singapore, Toronto and Mumbai are progressing. The Library of Mistakes hosts lectures which are livestreamed and recorded and a podcast series was launched in 2022. (The podcast ranks amongst the top 2% of all global podcasts for listeners.) The Library and the course are owned and operated by a Scottish registered charity called Didasko which donates its financial surpluses to promote financial education.

Russell has degrees in law from Queen’s University Belfast and Magdalene College Cambridge. He is a Fellow of The CFA Society of the UK, an Honorary Fellow of the CISI, an Honorary Professor at The University of Stirling and a Visiting Professor at Heriot Watt University. His second book, The Asian Financial Crisis 1995-1998: Birth of the Age of Debt, was published in July 2021.