Paul Myners, Baron Myners

Paul Myners, Baron Myners, CBE (born 1 April 1948) is Financial Services Secretary (a position sometimes referred to as City Minister) in HM Treasury, in Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government. He has held the position since October 2008, being made a life peer in order to permit his appointment, as he was not (and never has been) an elected Member of Parliament. He also serves on the Prime Minister's National Economic Council.

Myners has worked in the financial sector since 1974. He has also held a number of third sector posts, including Chairman of the Trustees of the Tate Gallery and Chairman of the Low Pay Commission, all of which he relinquished on his ministerial appointment. Immediately prior to his ministerial appointment he was Chairman of the Guardian Media Group, publisher of The Guardian and The Observer newspapers, and chairman of Land Securities Group, the largest quoted property company in Europe at that time. He is a former Chairman of Marks & Spencer and Deputy Chairman of PowerGen.

Background and personal life

Paul Myners was adopted at an early age by a Cornish family. His adopted father was a self-employed butcher and his mother a hairdresser. He attended Truro School, an independent Methodist college, on a scholarship. He graduated from the University of London, with a First Class Honours degree in Education and a Certificate in Education (teaching qualification), and became a secondary school teacher with the Inner London Education Authority (1971-2). He left teaching after two years and joined The Daily Telegraph as a financial journalist until 1974, when he moved into the financial sector as a junior portfolio manager at N M Rothschild & Sons.

Although his political views are not well known, The Independent reported that "a Labour Cabinet insider" said of him that "for a City grandee he has a genuine instinct for social justice." Myners has never donated to the Labour Party, but in 2007 he gave £12,700 to Gordon Brown's leadership campaign.

He is married to Alison Macleod, who is Chair of the Contemporary Art Society and a former Trustee of The Royal Academy Trust. Lady Myners previously owned a group of corporate service and hospitality businesses operating in the Thames Valley. Paul has three daughters from his first marriage and a son and daughter with Alison. His three eldest daughters work in employment law, real estate private equity and public relations.

City of London career

In 1985, he moved to pension fund manager Gartmore as chief executive, becoming chairman in 1987 and remaining there until 2001. During this period the funds managed by Gartmore rose from £1.2bn in 1985 to £75bn in 2001, and Myners earned an estimated £30m. With his retirement from Gartmore in 2001 he chose to focus on a wider range of interests, acting as non-executive director and chairman in a number of companies and third sector institutions.

He was a director at NatWest until it was taken over by Royal Bank of Scotland in the spring of 2000. In 2000 he became Chairman of the Guardian Media Group, publisher of The Guardian and The Observer newspapers. Other previously held directorships include Bank of New York, British & Commonwealth, Bridgepoint, Coutts, IMRO, Lloyd's Market Board, O2 and Orange. He has been a member of the Investment Committee of the sovereign wealth fund GIC (the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation), and a non-executive director at GLG Partners, a hedge fund which is one of the largest in the world.

Public appointments

Prior to his October 2008 ministerial appointment he was a member of the Court of the Bank of England (director). He is a former Chairman of The Association of Investment Trust Companies and has also been a member of the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) and The Panel on Takeovers and Mergers. He has compiled reports on institutional investment [3], equity capital raising and governance for HM Treasury and the Department of Trade and Industry [two reports before 1997 and three after]. Between August 2007 and October 2008 he was Chairman of the Personal Accounts Delivery Authority (PADA), the body tasked with implementing the UK Government's plans for a new national pensions savings scheme for private sector workers on low and moderate incomes. He resigned this position on his appointment as a minister.

He also served on the Commission on English Prisons, established by the Howard League for Penal Reform, and the Green Fiscal Commission, and was a member of the Commission on Vulnerable Employment sponsored by the TUC, and a trustee of the Smith Institute, an education and public policy think tank. He is a past Chairman of the Trustees of the Tate Gallery and Chairman of the Low Pay Commission, a past trustee at The National Gallery, The Royal Academy Trust and Glyndebourne, and served on the Advisory Council of St. Paul’s Cathedral Institute. Myners resigned from all these posts (with the exception of Glyndebourne) to avoid conflict of interest with his government post.

City Minister

He was created a Life Peer on 21 October 2008 in order to become Financial Services Secretary, gazetted as "Baron Myners, of Truro in the County of Cornwall". He was appointed Financial Services Secretary (a position sometimes referred to as City Minister) in HM Treasury, in Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government in October 2008. Shortly after his appointment Myners underwent a "baptism of fire" (The Independent), working on the £500bn 2008 United Kingdom bank rescue package.

In February 2009 Lord Myners was at the centre of controversy concerning the amount of pension paid to Sir Fred Goodwin, the former chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland. Myners said that he did not approve the details of Sir Fred's pension settlement when it was arranged the previous autumn as part of the government's bailout of RBS, pointing out that this was a matter for the Board of RBS. It was for his part in this situation that Myners was called by Boris Johnson "new minister for Major Banking Disasters"

In March 2009, his campaign to eliminate offshore tax avoidance was brought into question when a Sunday Times article revealed he had been chairman of AIH, a Bermuda-based insurance company, for five years .

Awards

He was awarded a CBE in 2001, and voted public company non-executive director of the year by readers of The Sunday Times in 2006. He also has an Honorary Doctorate in Law from the University of Exeter and is a Visiting Fellow at Nuffield College Oxford.

Notes and references

• Who’s Who’s 2009