Howard Davies (economist)

Davies speaking at the World Economic Forum Summit on the Global Agenda 2008.

Sir Howard Davies (born 12 February 1951) is Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Davies teaches for the TRIUM Global Executive MBA Program, an alliance of NYU Stern, the London School of Economics and HEC School of Management. Davies became Director of the LSE in 2003, taking over the post previously held by Anthony Giddens.

Life and career

Howard Davies was educated at Bowker Vale County Primary School, Manchester Grammar School, the Memorial University of Newfoundland and Merton College, Oxford, where he gained an MA degree in Modern History and Modern Languages. In 1979 he was awarded a Harkness Fellowship to attend Stanford Graduate School of Business from where he obtained an MS degree in management sciences.

Davies was previously employed by McKinsey and Company and was Special Advisor to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He was also previously employed at Treasury and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which included a posting of Private Secretary to the British Ambassador to France.

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 formed it from nine previously separate bodies. He was Deputy Governor of the Bank of England from 1995 to 1997, until the incoming Labour government 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. From 1995 to 2004 he was founder Chairman of the Employers Forum on Age, a body formed to oppose ageism at work. Since 2002 he has been a Trustee of the Tate (where he served as interim Chair 2008-9) 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 elected to an Honorary Fellowship of Merton College, Oxford 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). In 2009 he was appointed as an advisor to the Investment Committee of the Government Investment Corporation of Singapore.

He chaired the judges of the Man Booker Prize for fiction in 2007. He is a supporter of Manchester City and Lancashire County Cricket Club. He plays cricket for Barnes Common CC and Powerstock and Hooke CC.

Books and writing

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 is a columnist for The Financial Times, The Times, The Times Higher Education Supplement and Management Today.

Davies features as a character in the new David Hare play The Power of Yes which premiered at London's National Theatre in October 2009.

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

• Davies, Howard (2009). "Mend the Balance Sheet". QFINANCE.com

External links

• LSE - Meet the Director
• "Finance in the 21st Century" Howard Davies and Robert J. Shiller's monthly column for Project Syndicate.
• Biography of Sir Howard Davies at QFINANCE.com