Dr Paul Fisher
Paul Fisher is the Bank of England’s Executive Director for Markets. He and his directorate are responsible for all Bank operations in financial markets and their balance sheet consequences; managing the UK’s official foreign exchange reserves on behalf of HMT; market intelligence for monetary and financial stability. Paul is a member of the Monetary Policy Committee and the Interim Financial Policy Committee, as well as several senior management committees of the Bank. Paul joined the Bank in 1990 and has been part of the Bank’s senior staff since 1995.
He has written extensively on economic models of the UK economy and written or contributed to numerous articles on macroeconomic models, business cycles and exchange rates. Paul achieved his PhD in macroeconomic modelling at the University of Warwick in 1990, where he had worked as a full-time researcher for the previous ten years.
Sarfaraz Akram
Sarfaraz Akram became the first student representative to be appointed to the Board of Governors in June 2009. He is currently an Area Business Banking Manager at HSBC, where he is responsible for managing a team of relationship managers who look after small and medium sized businesses in the Midlands.
Sarfaraz joined HSBC in September 2008 on the Executive Management programme, after gaining a first class honours degree in Financial and Business Economics at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Sarfaraz has since completed the ifs BSc Honours in Financial Markets and Management.
Sarfaraz has links with various groups of current and past students at the ifs School of Finance. He has had previous experience of student representation during his time at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where he was an elected union society officer. He has also been North East representative on the National Union of Students regional executive committee, and has represented his university on the Aldwych Group.
Professor Roger Brown
Roger Brown is Professor of Higher Education Policy and Co-Director of the Centre for Research and Development in Higher Education at Liverpool Hope University. He was previously Vice Chancellor of Southampton Solent University, Chief Executive of the Higher Education Quality Council, Chief Executive of the Committee of Directors of Polytechnics and Secretary of the Polytechnics and Colleges Funding Council.
He has written a book Quality Assurance in Higher Education: The UK Experience since 1992 (2004) and many articles and lectures on different aspects of HE policy. His second book Higher Education and the Market: Taming the Beast is due to be published in 2010. He is currently a Visiting Professor or equivalent at London Metropolitan University, Napier University Edinburgh, the University of East London and the University of Southampton. He was elected a Vice President of the Society for Research in Higher Education in 2007.
Alastair Camp
Alastair Camp's career with Barclays spanned 34 years, covering a wide range of roles in the UK and overseas. He was Managing Director of Medium Business Banking between 2000 and 2005 and a member of the Barclays UK Banking Executive Committee. Subsequently, he was the Group's Corporate Responsibility Director for two years.
Previous senior roles with Barclays included Managing Director, UK Small Business Banking; Managing Director, Caribbean & Bahamas, based in Barbados; Corporate Director in Central London, and Head of the bank’s UK Strategic Planning team.
Alastair is a non-Executive Director of Barclays Pension Fund Trustees Ltd, an Associate non-Executive Director with Tower Hamlets Primary Care Trust (NHS), a Justice of the Peace, and has an MBA degree.
Brendan Cook
Brendan Cook, General Manager, Retail Banking and Wealth Management, was born in 1962 and studied Ancient and Modern History at Oxford University. He became an Associate of The Chartered Institute of Bankers in 1989 and completed his MBA at Kingston Business School in 1997.
Brendan began his banking career as a graduate trainee in 1984. Following his time in the branch network he joined cards where he headed up Project Management and later ran the Card Processing Centre in Leicester. He relocated to London as Head of Customer Marketing before being appointed to run HSBC’s global card unit dealing with the overall strategy and management of HSBC’s card businesses in over 30 countries.
In 2004, he was appointed Chief Executive Officer at Marks and Spencer Money and in 2006 took on the additional role of Head of Cards, Europe. In 2009 he was made Head of Premier and Financial Planning until appointed Head of Customer Propositions that summer. Brendan became Head of Personal Financial Services in January 2011.
Amanda Francis
Amanda is Managing Partner and Chief Executive of Buzzacott LLP. She was previously Head of the Buzzacott Charity Team, working with a wide range of charity and not-for-profit clients, providing audit, accounting and advisory services. Her particular interests lie with religious, welfare and service charities.
She is a contributor to a number of conferences aimed at the charity sector and, in particular, conferences held by the Association of Provincial Bursars. She is co-author of "Charity Accounting and Taxation" published by Bloomsbury Professional Publishing.
Amanda joined the charity team at Buzzacott in 1987 and became a partner in 1996.
Catharine French
Catharine is the Corporate Affairs Director for Retail and Business Banking and Chief of Staff to Antony Jenkins, CEO Retail and Business Banking.
Catharine has overall accountability for internal communications, media relations, community investment, public policy, marketing, and events for RBB as well as leading RBB’s work on Diversity & Inclusion and Treating Customers Fairly.
Catharine joined Barclays in 1993 and prior to her current role, she served as Consumer & Corporate Affairs Director for UK Retail Banking. Catharine graduated in History & Economics from Oxford University. She initially trained as an investment analyst at Cazenove & Co, before moving to work for the Treasury Select Committee at the House of Commons on economic and regulatory issues. She then worked at the Bank of England and Financial Services Authority leading the supervision of major UK and European financial services groups.
Simon Lloyd
Simon originally qualified as a solicitor and spent some years in private practice as a corporate lawyer.
Simon moved from private practice to work for Lloyds (subsequently Lloyds TSB) as an in-house lawyer, before joining Bristol & West plc as Company Secretary. During his time at Bristol & West, Simon took on a number of functional responsibilities for Bank of Ireland in the UK, including HR, Premises and Shared Services.
Simon joined Alliance & Leicester in 2003 as Group Secretary and became Group Secretary and HR Director in 2007. Since the acquisition of Alliance & Leicester by Banco Santander, Simon has taken on responsibility for HR activities across Santander UK.
David Nicholson
Since January 2009, David has been Managing Director of Halifax Community Bank within Lloyds Banking Group. He is responsible for leading the Halifax Retail business and is a member of the Group Executive Committee at Lloyds. He is Chairman of the "Your Tomorrow" pension fund trustees and a director of Sainsburys' Bank.
David is a qualified banker with 25 years experience in Retail Financial Services. Prior to joining Lloyds, he held a variety of positions within Halifax and HBOS including Managing Director, Mortgages. David joined the Halifax in 1995 on merger with the Leeds where he had started his career as a management trainee.
Gavin Shreeve
Gavin Shreeve is Principal of the ifs School of Finance. Before joining the ifs as its Chief Executive in June 1994, he worked as a journalist for some 24 years in the UK, the Middle East, Asia and parts of South America. He was also Editor of The Banker and Managing Editor of FT Extel. Gavin is a graduate of three universities, holding degrees in philosophy and economics, classics and history of art.
Chris Sullivan
Chris Sullivan was appointed Chief Executive of the Corporate Banking Division including SME and the Global Transaction Services Division in August 2009. These businesses hold market positions of 1st (in the UK) and 5th (globally) respectively. His previous role was as Chief Executive of RBS Insurance. Prior to this, Chris was Chief Executive of Retail and Deputy Chief Executive of Retail Markets.
Chris is the Group sponsor for Gender Diversity and the Focused Womens Network, which has seen its membership grow from 500 to currently over 5000 members.
Working initially in a number of sales and sales management roles, he was appointed Head of Group Training and Development in 1991. The role reflected his sustained interest in leadership and management development and initiated his close working relationship with Professor Harry Schroder (Princeton). In 1993, Chris became the National Sales Director for Lombard Business Finance, moving on to become Managing Director and later Chief Executive of Lombard Group, a business he joined from school in 1975.
Cathy Turner
Cathy Turner was appointed Barclays HR Director in April 2005, and in July 2008 her remit extended to include Strategy and Corporate Affairs.
Cathy joined Barclays in August 1997 as Compensation Manager. Following a period in Personal Financial Services, Cathy became Executive Compensation Director. She was also Investor Relations Director within Finance for four years.
Prior to Barclays, Cathy was a Practice Leader at Ernst and Young between 1994 and 1997. Previous experience has been gained through HR roles, specialising in performance management and compensation at Deloitte, Watson Wyatt, Percom and Volex.
Cathy has a BA(Hons) in Economics from Lancaster University.
Alastair Tyler
Alastair Tyler was appointed to the Board of Governors in March 2010 as representative of the ifs academic community.
Alastair is Head of Strategic Asset Finance in Barclays Corporate. This big ticket asset finance business is focused on providing debt finance to the major transportation, industrial and energy sectors for many of Barclays key clients. He joined Barclays in 2008 following previous spells with NatWest, Abbey National Treasury Services and RBS.
Alastair has maintained a long and close association with the ifs School of Finance. Following completion of his Associateship in 1990 he became a workshop tutor for the ifs, and in the past 20 years he has undertaken a number of teaching roles at Levels 4-6, together with roles as an examiner and author. He is a founder member and tutor representative on the ifs Academic Board.
Alastair has a BSc (Hons) degree in Economics from the University of Bristol.
Professor Geoff Whitty CBE
Geoff Whitty is a Professor in the School of Management at the University of Bath and a specialist advisor to the House of Commons Select Committee for Education.
He taught in primary and secondary schools before working in higher education at Bath University, King's College London, Bristol Polytechnic and Goldsmiths College. He joined the Institute of Education, University of London as a Professor in 1992 and served as its Director from September 2000 until December 2010.
Geoff has led evaluations of major educational reforms and has assisted schools and local authorities in building capacity for improvement. His many publications include Making Sense of Education Policy, Sage Publications 2002, and Education and the Middle Class, Open University Press 2003, which won the Society for Educational Studies book prize in 2004.
He is a member of the General Teaching Council for England and the Board of Ofsted. He is a past President of both the British Educational Research Association and the College of Teachers and a former Chair of the British Council’s Education and Training Advisory Committee.