Benjamin Cohen

Benjamin Cohen is well known both as an entrepreneur and as a television journalist.

He has been both the youngest ever director of a public company and the youngest correspondent on a network news programme. He regularly speaks on his experiences in the dot.com boom, privacy, e-commerce, new media and diversity.

Benjamin Cohen joined Channel 4 News in 2006 as the programme's first business and technology correspondent.

Ben appears across Channel 4 News at Noon, Channel 4 News and their sister programme More 4 News, where Ben has recently fronted a week of special programming.

On screen he covers a wide range of technology stories as well as wider consumer issues, privacy, data protection, Britain's growing gambling industry and the media (both old and new) particularly the premium rate phone-lines scandal and the increasingly acrimonious battle between Sky and Virgin Media.

Since joining Channel 4 News, he has gained a number of scoops including: the Midlands council suing computer giant Dell, irregularities in competitions on a major radio station and strong warnings from the European Commission for both Google and the mobile phone networks.

As an entrepreneur, Benjamin became synonymous with the late 1990s dot.com boom. As an A-level student he founded a series of successful websites.

JewishNet (later soJewish) was a community portal that he founded in 1998 and thrust him into the limelight at the tender age of 16. At one point, the company that he controlled was valued at £5m . The company later merged with the London Jewish News (the largest free Jewish newspaper in the world) and then reversed into Totally plc on the London Stock Exchange AIM market. For a day Cohen was the youngest ever director of a publicly quoted company. The site which is now known as TotallyJewish.com continues to be a market leader to this day.

He later founded CyberBritain, then a search engine and data marketing company that at the height of the dot.com boom was valued at £20m and was the subject of a BBC fly on the wall documentary. The company owned a number of web properties including itunes.co.uk- some years before Apple was to trademark the same name. Inevitable legal action followed, and after a judicial review, Apple won the rights to the name. In 2004, he began writing for The Times and The Times Online. As e-business columnist, Benjamin chronicled the new online boom, the growth of Google and broke a number of stories.

In 2005 founded the award winning gay online newspaper PinkNews.co.uk, where he served as its first editor. In 2006, he joined Channel 4 News.

Benjaminis also an experienced after dinner speaker and lecturer.