Capital Economics is one of the leading independent macro economic research consultancies in the world, providing research on the US, Canada, Europe, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and the UK, and on the property sector. Founded in 1999, Capital Economics have gained an enviable reputation for original and insightful research and have built up a wide and distinguished client base. They produce publications for world-wide distribution and offer support to clients in their respective time-zones through our offices in Toronto, London and Singapore.

Over 1200 institutions across the globe, ranging from some of the world’s largest banks to boutique property investors, subscribe to their publication packages. These include fund managers, insurance companies, pension funds, investment banks, hedge funds, stockbrokers, retailers, house builders, property developers, construction companies, building societies and specialist lenders. Capital Economics are their clients’ outsourced economic advisers.

Roger Bootle is an economist and a weekly columnist for the Daily Telegraph. He is currently the Managing Director of Capital Economics, an independent macroeconomic research consultancy.

After studying at Merton and Nuffield Colleges, Oxford, Bootle began his career in the academic world as a lecturer in Economics at St Anne’s College, Oxford.

He worked as an economist for Capel-Cure Myers and Lloyds Merchant Bank. From 1989 until 1998, he was an economist at Midland Bank/HSBC, rising to the position of Group Chief Economist of the HSBC group. During the John Major government in the 1990s, he was appointed to the UK treasury’s panel of economic forecasters under Kenneth Clarke.

Bootle founded Capital Economics in 1999.

Geert Wilders (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈɣɪːrt ˈʋɪldərs] or [ˈʝɪːrt ˈβ̞ɪldərs], born 6 September 1963) is a Dutch right-wing politician and the founder and leader of the Party for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid – PVV), the third-largest political party in the Netherlands. Wilders is the Parliamentary group leader of his party in the Dutch House of Representatives. In the formation in 2010 of the current Rutte cabinet, a minority cabinet of VVD and CDA, he actively participated in the negotiations, resulting in a "support agreement" (gedoogakkoord) between the PVV and these parties, but withdrew his support in April 2012, citing disagreements with the cabinet on proposed budget cuts. Wilders is best known for his criticism of Islam, summing up his views by saying, "I don't hate Muslims, I hate Islam". Wilders' views regarding Islam have made him a deeply divisive figure in the Netherlands and abroad.

Raised a Roman Catholic, Wilders left the church at his coming of age. His travels to Israel as a young adult, as well as to neighbouring Arab countries, helped form his political views. Wilders worked as a speechwriter for the conservative-liberal People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie – VVD), and later served as parliamentary assistant to party leader Frits Bolkestein from 1990 to 1998. He was elected to the Utrecht city council in 1996, and later to the House of Representatives. Citing irreconcilable differences over the party's position on the accession of Turkey to the European Union, he left the VVD in 2004 to form his own party, the Party for Freedom.