John Shepherd: Former 'Independent' journalist who excelled at analysing complex financial issues with wit and brio

He covered the ins and outs of the business world with consummate ease and directness

Shepherd: ‘He always kept his head in a crisis, and somehow he would always manage to make you laugh’

John Shepherd was a business journalist who excelled at writing about complex financial issues in everyman's language with a touch of trademark humour. In later roles in public relations he was able to turn a PR crisis into an opportunity for fun. His chosen business topics as a journalist reflected his own interests, in gambling, drink and sport. “He loved to party,” his wife Claire told The Independent.

Shepherd was born in London in 1958. He attended William Ellis School, Highgate. Following college he worked for Barclays Bank for a short time as a trainee cashier but soon sought a more challenging role and joined the Financial Times in 1979 as a junior reporter.

From the FT, Shepherd became part of the team for The Independent when it began publishing in 1986 under founding editor Andreas Whittam Smith. Joining as a business journalist, he was City Editor within a year. He covered the ins and outs of the business world with consummate ease and directness. By the end of his time at The Independent, where he finished as Business Editor, the newspaper had won the Wincott Financial Journal of the Year - regarded as the Oscars of the sector - in 1987 and 1996.

After working for corporate PR specialists Burson-Marsteller, he joined the online gambling company PartyGaming plc in September 2005. In an industry known for offshore business and secrecy, Shepherd brought a refreshing openness to the firm's media coverage. “We took the decision at the outset that we are going to be a very transparent company and wherever we can we are going be industry leader and set the market leading best practice,” finance director Martin Weigold said at the time.

Shepherd brought the transparency sought by Weigold – often gilded with humour. When competitor Empire Online launched injunction proceedings against PartyGaming in the Gibraltar high court, accusing the company of breach of contract, Shepherd's media statement read: “We congratulate Empire for kick-starting the pantomime season. We remain confident of a successful outcome to the litigation.” The legal panto concluded the following year with PartyGaming acquiring its smaller rival.

A year later the US government's Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act outlawed online poker and casino, knocking 75 per cent off PartyGaming's worldwide revenue. An ever-vigilant Shepherd told the Financial Times that he had foreseen inevitable consolidation within the industry even before the US introduced prohibition, and that the strategy of a business already based on mergers and acquisitions was unlikely to change.

Shepherd's team won awards two years running for annual reports – documents renowned for so often being dull and forgettable – which were “stunningly different and instantly accessible”, in the words of judges, by using gaming-related imagery to reflect the company's achievements. He saw the company through its merger with bwin.party, the introduction by New Jersey of online gambling in 2013 and an investor's challenge to the company's board.

Peter Reynolds, who worked with Shepherd at bwin.party, told The Independent that this period “tested John's PR management skills to the full. John's ability to capture the mood in a simple phrase became folklore across the industry. The now infamous reference to 'irritable owl syndrome' when describing the attentions of SpringOwl Asset Management, a New York-based activist investor that challenged the bwin.party board in 2014, was widely believed to be another of his unheralded masterpieces.”

Reynolds added, “When not in the office, he could often be found in a City watering hole sharing late-night stories with those able to keep up with his energy and joie de vivre.”

Shepherd retired from bwin.party in October 2014 to set up a PR consultancy and tend a five-acre smallholding in Somerset with his wife, Claire. Since 2010 he had been a member of the Main Cross-Gambling Industry Fundraising Committee, which has raised more than £1m for Great Ormond Street Hospital's Critical Cardiac Unit. His family is continuing the fund-raising in his memory via JustGiving.

Martin Weigold, finance director at bwin.party, told The Independent, “John was a man that you wanted by your side when the going got tough. He would always keep his head in a crisis, no matter how bad things seemed to appear on the face of it. And somehow, in the midst of it all, he would manage to make you laugh with his wicked wit. John was truly a great man ... a legend, in fact.”

John Shepherd, journalist and public relations consultant: born London 10 August 1958; married Claire (one daughter, one son); died London 2 February 2016.