Former UK chancellor George Osborne, architect of the austerity drive following the financial crisis, is dropping his portfolio career to work full-time as a banker.
Osborne announced on Monday that he would give up almost all of his eclectic range of jobs to join M&A advisory firm Robey Warshaw as a partner. This will mean departing from the Evening Standard newspaper and his position as a senior adviser at investment firm Blackrock.
“Robey Warshaw is the best of the best, advising great businesses on how to grow, and I’m proud to be joining this first-rate team,” Osborne told the Financial Times.
Robey Warshaw is a small investment bank headquartered in Mayfair, which currently employs 13 people and made a profit of £17.9 million last year. Osborne will become the firm’s first outside partner.
It is unclear how much remuneration Osborne will receive in his new role, though filings at Companies House showed that Robey Warshaw’s highest paid partner received £10 million in 2020 and £27.8 million in 2019.
“We believe that George will significantly enhance the advice we give to clients,” a Robey Warshaw spokesperson said in a statement. “He brings differentiated experience and expertise to our team from his leading roles in global finance over the past decade.”
Robey Warshaw was founded in 2013 and quickly became a preeminent firm in the bulge-bracket deal space. It has recently advised on a range of high-profile deals including Comcast’s $39 billion acquisition of Sky, BP’s $10.5 billion purchase of shale assets from BHP Group, and the London Stock Exchange’s $27 billion takeover of Refinitiv.
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Though he is giving up most of the nine jobs he collected since departing the government in 2016, Osborne will remain chair of the advisory board of Exor, currently managing the Italian Agnelli family’s interest in Ferrari and Juventus.
On Monday, HM Treasury named Nikhil Rathi, former chief executive of the London Stock Exchange, as the new head of the FCA.
Rathi will take over from interim chief executive Christopher Woolard, who entered the position after the last permanent CEO, Andrew Bailey, who led the regulator for over four years before stepping down in March to become governor of the Bank of England.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak said in a statement on the appointment: “Nikhil is the outstanding candidate for the position of chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority, and I am delighted that he has agreed to take up the role.
“We have conducted a thorough, worldwide search for this crucial appointment and, through his wide-ranging experiences across financial services, I am confident that Nikhil will bring the ambitious vision and leadership this organisation demands.”
Rathi, who is ethnically British-Asian, will also be the first BAME head of the watchdog. He will be paid £455,000 a year with a 12% pension, though he will not be entitled to bonuses. His term will last for five years.
Commenting on his new appointment, Rathi said: “I am honoured to be appointed chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority - I look forward to building on the strong legacy of Andrew Bailey and the exceptional leadership of Christopher Woolard and the FCA executive team during the crisis.
“In the years ahead, we will create together an even more diverse organisation, supporting the recovery with a special focus on vulnerable consumers, embracing new technology, playing our part in tackling climate change, enforcing high standards and ensuring the UK is a thought leader in international regulatory discussions.”
Javier Meseguer has been appointed as General Manager Southern Europe. Based in Madrid, he will report to Steffen Schaack, Senior Vice President Global Business Development, and will oversee Drooms’ business expansion in real estate, corporate finance and M&A in Spain, Portugal and Italy.
Drooms has also expanded its UK sales team with the appointments of Ditte Nielsen as Senior Business Development Manager and Alessandra Azzena as Business Development Manager. They will report to Rosanna Woods, Managing Director of Drooms UK.
Alexandre Grellier, co-founder and CEO of Drooms, commented: “We continue to see a need for digitalisation among our customers. This not only means making documents available in digital formats but also by ensuring that entire work processes are digitalised. Our latest expansion is the logical next step in our support for customers around the world in this process. Our new offices in Madrid and Barcelona means we are ideally placed to tackle this need in southern Europe head on. As we see it, data protection and data transfer have no borders and we plan to continue our expansion globally in 2020”.
Steffen Schaack, Senior Vice President Global Business Development at Drooms, added: “Our new team members will strengthen our presence in their respective markets and develop further our relationships with customers. We are now widely recognised as the global, independent experts for secure data transfer and digitalisation.”
Javier Meseguer has 16 years’ experience in digital services and data rooms and has invaluable expertise in establishing sales networks. He previously worked as Director of Sales for Snowflake, a provider of cloud-based data rooms, as well as IntraLinks, SAS Institute and The MathWorks.
Prior to joining Drooms, Ditte Nielsen worked as Senior Account Manager at Merrill Corporation, a global SaaS provider for M&A. Alessandra Azzena arrives from Tableau Software, where she oversaw account management and sales in her role as Commercial Territory Manager.
Drooms has also appointed Dennis Kasch as Business Development Manager for the DACH region sales team, bringing its total number of employees across the European market to 170.
You can find our latest interview with Drooms specialists here.
