Evan Harold Davis (born 8 April 1962) is an English journalist, presenter for the BBC, and former economist. He has presented Dragons' Den since 2005, and PM since 2018.
In October 2001, Davis took over from Peter Jay as the BBC's economics editor. He left this post in April 2008 to become a presenter on BBC Radio 4's Today programme. In September 2014, he left Today to be the main presenter of Newsnight for four years. On 5 November 2018, Davis began presenting Radio 4's PM programme.
Early life
Davis was born in Malvern, Worcestershire, to South African parents, Quintin Visser Davis, an engineer, and Hazel Noreen Davis, who would train to become a psychotherapist. He has two older brothers, Beric and Roland. The family had emigrated from South Africa to Malvern in January 1962, while Hazel was pregnant with Davis, in reaction to apartheid. Two years later the family moved to Ashtead, Surrey, where Davis grew up. He attended Dorking County Grammar School, which in 1976 became The Ashcombe School, Dorking, where he was head boy. Davis then attended St John's College, Oxford between 1981 and 1984, gaining a First in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, before obtaining a Master of Public Administration at Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University. While at Oxford University, he edited Cherwell, the student newspaper.
Early career
Davis began work as an economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and while there he was briefly seconded to help officials work on early development of the Community Charge system of local government taxation (better known as the Poll Tax). In 1988 he moved to the London Business School, writing articles for their publication Business Strategy Review. He returned to the Institute for Fiscal Studies in 1992, writing a paper on "Britain, Europe and the Square Mile" for the European Policy Forum which argued that British financial prosperity depended on being seen as a bridgehead to the European Union.
In 1993, Davis joined the BBC as an economics correspondent. He worked as economics editor on BBC Two's Newsnight programme from 1997 to 2001. In the mid-1990s he was a member of the Social Market Foundation's Advisory Council; he is a member of the British-American Project for the Successor Generation.
BBC
Economics editor
As the BBC's economics editor, Davis was responsible for reporting and analysing economic developments on a range of programmes on BBC radio and television, particularly the Ten O'Clock News. He also had a role in shaping the extensive BBC coverage of economics across all the corporation's outputs, including online.
Davis also wrote a blog for the BBC website entitled Evanomics in which he "attempts to understand the real world, using the tool kit of economics". Subjects he discussed included road pricing, care for the elderly, Gordon Brown's budget and how to choose wine.
Davis has won several awards including the Work Foundation's Broadcast Journalist of the Year award in 1998, 2001 and 2003, and the Harold Wincott Business Broadcaster of the Year award in 2002. In 2008, Davis was ranked first in the Independent on Sundays "pink list" of the hundred most influential gay and lesbian figures in British society.
On 23 May 2005, Davis crossed picket lines during a day of industrial action by BBC staff over announced job cuts. Other notable broadcasters who turned up for work during the strike included Terry Wogan, Shelagh Fogarty and Declan Curry. Davis was also noted for breaking a strike at the BBC which had been called by the National Union of Journalists: on 6 November 2010, he arrived to present the Today Programme at 3:30 am, along with fellow presenter Sarah Montague, although this was not technically crossing a picket line as they arrived before it was formed.
Today programme
In mid-2007, Davis was a guest presenter on the Today programme for two weeks. In April 2008, he stood down as BBC Economics Editor to join the Today programme as a full-time presenter, replacing Carolyn Quinn. In 2009, Davis said that one of the best things about presenting on the radio is that "you can look things up on Wikipedia while on air".