Peter Westaway—former adviser to the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee and ex-Chief Economist at Vanguard Europe—has spent decades forecasting global markets, shaping monetary policy, and guiding investment strategy.
With experience spanning the Bank, Vanguard, and Nomura International, he’s become a trusted voice for investors navigating today’s volatile landscape.
In this exclusive interview with The Champions Speakers Agency, Westaway shares his views on how inflation dynamics could evolve, where interest rates may be headed, the real trade-offs of ESG integration, and why artificial intelligence will be one of the biggest forces shaping the future of business and investment.
Q: Inflation has been at the centre of economic debate in recent years. From your perspective, how do you see the current inflation outlook evolving?
Peter Westaway: “Well thank you, yes I did spend 11 years advising on monetary policy at the bank and much of my career in the city trying to predict and explain Central Bank actions, and certainly central banks have had a pretty rough trot over the last few years with inflation getting up to levels that we haven’t really seen since the 1970s.
“And at the same time we’ve been experiencing depressed economic activity – so-called stagflation – and this has been driven up by higher commodity and food prices mostly caused by the war in Ukraine.
“Now when those pressures ease, history shows that inflation can fall back just as sharply on the way down as it rises on the way up.
“Of course the risk that central bankers worry about is that firms …