Howard Davies (LSE)

Sir Howard Davies (born 1951) is the Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science, having taken over the post in 2003 from sociologist Anthony, now Lord, Giddens.

Life and career

Howard Davies was educated at Manchester Grammar School, the Memorial University of Newfoundland and Merton College, Oxford, where he gained an MA in Modern History and Modern Languages. in 1979 he was awarded a Harkness Fellowship to attend Stanford Graduate School of Business in California where he completed an MSc in management sciences.

Davies has worked for McKinsey and Company in London, and as Special Advisor to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He had previously worked at the Treasury and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, including two years as Private Secretary to the British Ambassador in Paris.

His appointments have included Executive Chairman of the Financial Services Authority from 1997-2003. he was the first Chairman of the FSA, the single financial regulator for the UK financial sector. He constructed it from nine previously separate bodies. He was Deputy Governor of the Bank of England from 1995 to 1997, until the incoming Labour governemnt asked him to create the new regulator. Prior to this, he served for three years as Director General of the Confederation of British Industry. From 1987 to 1992 he was Controller of the Audit Commission. He was also a non-executive director of GKN between 1989-1995, and a member of the International Advisory Board of Natwest bank from 1991-95.

Since 2002 he has been a Trustee of the Tate and is a member of the governing body of the Royal Academy of Music. He is the Patron of Working Families, a campaigning charity which supports the rights of parents in the workplace. In 2004 he was appointed to an Honorary Fellowship at Merton College and became a non-executive Director of Morgan Stanley. He was appointed to the Board of Paternoster Limited in 2006 as a non-executive Director. Davies is also a member of the advisory boards of the China Banking Regulatory Commission (since 2003) and the China Securities Regulatory Commission (since 2004).

He Chaired the judges of the Man Booker Prize for fiction in 2007. He is a supporter of Manchester Cityand Lancashire County Cricket Club. He plays cricket for Barnes Common CC.

Davies has published two books. Chancellors Tales (Polity Press, 2006) and, with co-author David Green, Global Financial Regulation: the Essential Guide (Polity Press 2008). He writes regularly for the Financial Times, The Times, The Times Higher Education Supplement and Management Today.

He was appointed Knight Bachelor in the Queen's Official Birthday Honours 2000.

On 20 September 2008 "The Guardian" newspaper named Davies as one of 14 'villains' who "is to blame for this mess", the mess being the economic problems of the previous week in the US and UK, due to his "light touch" regulation in the City as chairman of the FSA. [http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/sep/20/wallstreet.economics]

External links

* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1055417.stm Knighthood for bank governor, "BBC News" (5 December 2000)]
* [http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/meetthedirector LSE - Meet the Director]