Robert Smith

Corporate Finance Editor, Financial Times

Robert Smith oversees the Financial Times’s coverage of corporate debt, buyouts, private capital and anything else related to companies raising money. His previous roles at the FT and elsewhere focused on covering bond markets and distressed debt.

Robert has been at the forefront of several of the FT’s high-profile financial investigations, winning acclaim for his role in exposing former prime minister David Cameron’s dubious lobbying efforts for Greensill Capital in 2021. He also played a leading role in the FT’s agenda‑setting reporting on the collapse of First Brands Group, dissecting its opaque supply‑chain finance structures, off‑balance‑sheet funding and the billions of dollars of debt at the heart of the scandal. 

Robert has won numerous awards for his reporting, including Investigation of the Year at the British Journalism Awards, Private Eye's Paul Foot Award for Investigative and Campaigning Journalism and the Gerald Loeb award for best international reporting.