Erik Britton

Erik Britton is Managing Director & CEO at Fathom, where he is responsible for designing and implementing the company’s strategy, for guiding its research, and for winning and leading major projects.

His work focuses on the forces shaping the global economy, with particular expertise in geopolitics, financial markets, US-China competition, de-globalisation, global trade, as well as the impact of AI and technological change.

Prior to joining Fathom in 2007, Erik Britton was a director at a leading economic forecasting consultancy heading up major consultancy projects for clients in blue-chip industrial firms, financial services and government in the UK, Europe and United States.

Earlier in his career, Erik spent five years at the Bank of England, where he ran the Bank’s UK macroeconomic model, coordinated its international forecast, and managed a team of economists in its Monetary Analysis Division. During his time there, Erik developed the ‘fan chart’. Introduced in 1996, the fan chart transformed how the Bank communicated its forecasts by showing not just its central projection, but the range and probability of possible outcomes around it. He subsequently co-authored the Bank’s seminal paper explaining the methodology. The approach has since been adopted by other central banks and continues to be widely used in economic forecasting around the world.

Erik has a BA (Hons) in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from the University of Oxford and an MSc in Economics from Birkbeck College, University of London.