WHEN Baroness Shriti Vadera was rising through the ranks of that bastion of white maleness that was the City of London in the 1980s and 1990s, the idea that a woman (let alone an Asian woman) could become Governor of the Bank of England would have seemed highly far-fetched.
The fact she could be seriously considered as a possible successor to Mark Carney when he steps down (in January 2020) suggests that either her undoubted talents are of the ‘ceiling-shattering’ variety or that diversity has come a very long way in the intervening years. Perhaps it is a bit of both.
The first woman to head a major British bank – she has been chair of Santander UK since April 2015 – she was previously one of an inner sanctum of advisers around Gordon Brown credited with saving the UK economy from disaster during the financial crisis.
The daughter of wealthy tea planters in Uganda, her family fled to Mumbai in 1972 at the time of the expulsion when she was 10. She would later recall being shocked by the poverty she witnessed in India, in particular the sight of children who had been deliberately maimed “so they could beg”.
Another formative experience to cut through her privileged background was when she found her nanny in tears because her profligate husband was spending all of the money reserved for her children’s schooling.
The young Vadera arranged for her grandmother to pay the school directly (most schools in India of any repute charge fees) and says the episode left a lasting lesson about the importance of economics and learning, both of which became key aspects of her life.
“It made me realise education means freedom and that you can’t really change the world without education.”
She would later be appointed a life peer by Gordon Brown in a Labour government which espoused early on the often spoken mantra: Education, Education, Education.
Vadera’s family left India to settle in the UK and she was educated at Northwood College (an independent school), then did Philosophy, Politics and English (PPE) at Oxford before joining the investment bank UBS Warburg in 1984 where her work included advising governments of developing countries, debt relief and restructuring.
Such is her standing that she is one of a number of women whose names have been linked with the 300 year old Bank of England’s top job – a fact that critics of both its historic and current under-representation of women at the highest levels have been quick to applaud.
Baroness Vadera herself has remained discreetly tight-lipped, acknowledging only that the Bank “needs more senior women” in all departments and that as far as the Governorship is concerned, the important thing is to “find the best person” irrespective of gender.
She says her experience of overt sexism in the City when she was battling her way to the top “toughened” her up, but she would not expect such “unfair” behaviour to be tolerated today.
At Santander UK, gender equality measures mean male interview panels have become a thing of the past, while Baroness Vadera’s tenure has overseen a leadership programme for more than 200 female employees
Her long career in banking and government has contained many memorable achievements. After her 14-year stint with SG Warburg, she served on the Council of Economic Advisers at the Treasury from 1999 until 2007, and was a Government minister (as a member of the House of Lords) from 2007 until 2009. Perhaps her greatest moment to date - and certainly the ‘scariest’ - came during the financial crisis of 2008 which struck shortly after she’d been brought into Gordon Brown’s government as Baroness Vadera of Holland Park.
With the global financial system facing meltdown, she was one of a tiny group of advisers around Brown who came up with the rescue package that prevented Lloyds and RBS from going under, thereby saving the UK economy from possible collapse.
Years later the awesome sense of responsibility and the precariousness of the moment still haunt her: “I don't think I had ever been so frightened in my life,” she admits, pointing out that the crucial thing for Brown’s team was to keep their nerves hidden - since the package of measures was all about instilling “confidence” in the economic system’s ability to weather the storm.
That said, there was no guarantee at the time that the innovatory rescue package would work and a genuine fear on her part that if it didn’t “there would be no cash in the ATMs and the economy would not be able to function…There was never a moment’s respite. We had BlackBerries back then and mine was primed to alert me to certain financial indicators and it would keep going off during the night. That tension and total awareness are hard to switch off. When I left in autumn 2009 I had nightmares. It stays with you.”
As for those critics who claim the banks were bailed out at the expense of the British people, Baroness Vadera gives them short shrift pointing out that the measures prevented Britain plunging into a 1930s style Great Depression: “It was never about saving the banks. It was about saving the economy from the banks”.
Today Baroness Vadera is one of the leading lights of corporate London. As well as being the chair of Santander UK, she is on the board of BHP Billiton and until recently AstraZeneca. Baroness Vadera also runs the UK financial services umbrella group charged with mitigating any adverse fallout from Brexit.
Given her experience in tackling financial crises, can she give a heads-up on when the next global economic meltdown will happen? “I don’t know where the next one is coming from but there are cyber risks, there’s uncertainty in the political environment globally and there’s increasing activity outside the conventional banking system. The banks are ten times better capitalised but there is no shortage of crises in the world.”
