Richard Quest

Richard Austin Quest (born 9 March 1962) is an English journalist and a CNN International Anchor. He is also CNN Business Editor at Large, based in New York City.

He anchors "Quest Means Business", the five-times-weekly business programme and fronts the CNN shows "Business Traveller", "The Express" and "Quest's World of Wonder".

Quest is a native of Liverpool, Merseyside, England, having been born and partly brought up there. He is Jewish.

He was educated at the state comprehensive Roundhay School in Leeds, followed by Airedale and Wharfedale College and the University of Leeds, where he studied law, taking his degree in 1983 (Law LLB Hons.), and was called to the Bar. He had already gained broadcasting experience when he spent the 1983–84 academic year in the United States at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. As news director for campus radio station WRVU, he built the reporting staff from scratch.

Quest became a trainee journalist at the BBC in 1985, joining its financial section in 1987, and moving to New York City in 1989 to become the BBC's North American business correspondent.

Quest later worked for the BBC from the United States as part of its then-fledgling BBC News 24 channel. He was the business correspondent reporting on, and discussing the world stock market in a regular segment entitled World Business Report usually aired between 2:00am and 3:00am (GMT), a programme that he presented alongside Paddy O'Connell. He was also an occasional presenter on the BBC's early-morning Business Breakfast programme.

Quest joined CNN in 2001 for the launch of Business International. Since this time Quest has covered a variety of different events for CNN, amongst others an analysis of the U.S. elections as American Quest and the start of the circulation of euro banknotes and coins on 1 January 2002 and the last official commercial flight of Concorde. He has also headed up CNN's coverage of several events involving the British Royal Family.

In 2006, Quest turned down an opportunity to join Al Jazeera English news channel, the English language version of al-Jazeera, "on the grounds that being gay and Jewish might not be suitable".

On 9 April 2015, Quest was announced as the host of the ABC game show 500 Questions. He was replaced by Dan Harris for the show's second season.

On 8 June 2015, Quest appeared as a contestant on The CNN Quiz Show: The Seventies Edition special produced by Eimear Crombie, along with his partner Brooke Baldwin playing for StandUp for Kids.

Quest is also an Aviation Correspondent for CNN, and extensively covered the story of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared on 8 March 2014. Quest later wrote the book, The Vanishing of Flight MH370: The True Story of the Hunt for the Missing Malaysian Plane, published by Penguin Random House on 8 March 2016.

In 2008, Quest was arrested in New York City's Central Park with drugs in his pocket. Quest admitted being in possession of crystal methamphetamine, a controlled substance. On 26 June 2014, Quest described his past experience as a closeted gay man on his CNN television programme Quest Means Business.