City profiles

Richard Hughes

Britain’s “new fiscal watchdog” – who, if all goes to plan, will succeed Robert Chote at the Office for Budget Responsibility later this year – believes in “tearing up the old fiscal framework” in favour of a “radical rethink on debt”, said Patrick Hosking in The Times. Doubtless that’s “music to the ears” of Chancellor Rishi Sunak after his “recent blowout in borrowing”. The OBR is in charge of monitoring the Government’s performance against its taxing and spending rules – a tricky proposition when the economy is heading for its biggest annual slump in three centuries. Richard Hughes, who is currently attached to the left-leaning Resolution Foundation, is something of an “insider”, having previously served at the Treasury. But colleagues insist he is “not afraid to speak truth to power”.

Eric Yuan

“Few people have been made as wealthy by the coronavirus” as Zoom boss Eric Yuan, said Richard Waters in the FT. His personal stake in the “ubiquitous video app” is now worth $10bn. So it’s a relief to see he’s as prone to cock-ups as the rest of us. On a recent conference call, Yuan “forgot to unmute himself” – prompting the kind of “pantomime” playing out on screens globally. A Chinese engineer who moved to the US in the 1990s, Yuan, 50, says he now feels “more at home” there. He is clearly “uncomfortable” about escalating US-China tensions, but has plenty of friends in Silicon Valley, who praise him for taking personal responsibility for Zoom’s technical glitches. As one says: he’s an “out-infront leader”.