After Dinner Speakers: Hamish McRae, Craig Fairbrass, Andrew Harvey

He is the author of the acclaimed work on the future "The World in 2020: Power, Culture and Prosperity" first published in 1994 and translated into more than a dozen languages, including Japanese, Korean and Chinese (two editions). Since the publication of "The World in 2020" he has been in demand world-wide as a speaker. Hamish is also the principal economic commentator for "The Independent", a columnist for "Fortune", and a visiting professor at the School of Management of UMIST. His other books include "Capital City - London as a Financial Centre", co-authored with Frances Cairncross, and "Wake-up Japan", co-authored with Tadashi Nakamae. Awards include Financial Journalist of the Year in 1979, a special merit award in the first Amex Bank essay awards in 1987, and in 1996 Columnist of the Year in the Periodical Publisher's Awards. He is a director of Gartmore British Income and Growth Trust and of Net Profit Publications. Net Profit Publications, which he helped found, is a specialist electronic publisher of information about the way the Internet is changing the business world, publishing newsletters, books and reports on the subject. Its clients include BT, Daimler-Benz, ABM-Amro Bank, National Westminster Bank, and Lloyds Bank. His current areas of work include the economies of East Asia and the impact of the Internet on the global economy. "Wake-up Japan", published in Japanese in October 1999 by Nihon Keisai Shimbun, argues that Japan can best revitalise its economy by adopting structural reforms, and that a programme of reform is vital to the whole East Asian region.