WHEN the financial history of the UK in the early 21st century comes to be written, Baroness Shriti Vadera’s should feature prominently.
For much of 2019 there was heightened speculation as to whether Lady Vadera might become the first female Governor of the Bank of England, but that job went to Andrew Bailey, the chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority (the UK’s financial regulatory body).
He took up the role in March 2020 and she has gone on to consolidate her position as one of the most brilliant financial minds of our age.
She started her career as a City investment banker, moved into the Treasury and wound up as a very significant figure during the financial crash of 2008, working closely with prime minister Gordon Brown and is widely credited with helping to rescue the UK economy from freefall at the time.
Shortly after the crisis, she assumed a new role as a minister advising the G20 (group of countries with the most advanced economies).
In 2010, she left government and was nonexecutive director on the boards of pharma giants AstraZeneca and natural resources conglomerate BHP before being appointed the first
non-executive chair of a high street bank Santander and its UK Group Holdings plc in 2015.
She remained in that role till 2020, before joining the board of financial services company powerhouse Prudential Plc (which is an Asia-led portfolio of businesses) in May 2020, and it was announced then that in 2021 she would become chair of Prudential plc.
Of her £765,00-a-year role, she said at the time of the appointment: “It is an honour to join the board and to become chair.
“Prudential combines the highest standards of governance with a strong brand and a dynamic business model. “I look forward to working with colleagues and other stakeholders as Prudential continues to focus on fast-growing markets in Asia.”
Philip Remnant, Prudential’s senior independent director, who reportedly led the recruitment process, commented: “Shirti Vadera was the unanimous choice of the board following a rigorous assessment of external and internal candidates from around the world.
“She has senior boardroom experience at complex organisations with extensive international operations and strong strategic and financial services experience.”
Her focus on the developing world at the start of her city career and her renewed interest in Asia has been something of a constant thread. There is ongoing debate as to how much she will shake-up of Prudential’s business in the region.
It should be noted a lot of her expertise is in south east and far east economies. During her time with G20, she was a senior advisor to the Korean presidency of the organisation at the time and she also acted as an advisor to investors and governments, including Temasek, a global investment firm headquarted in Singapore.
In addition, it has been reported that she is keen to see more Asian women take up positions of authority with Prudential – of the 13 executives listed as on the regional executive committee – only two appear to be of south east Asian origin.
Described as a grandee of the City, she is one of the few high-profile women at the top of a global financial outfit.
In a rare 2018 interview, she has described her early experiences.
“They toughened me up but that’s not fair and not right. When I look at all the gender issues we faced, the point is that later generations of women should not have to.”
She told This is Money website that there was no magic bullet and if it was easy it would have already been implemented.
“This is about wider society, about how women are perceived, how they perceive themselves, the roles they play, what is seen to be feminine and masculine, the balance with family life and bringing up kids.”
She has a reputation as someone who gets business done – some perhaps quite mischievously planted the idea in the media that Vadera was hard to work for and unfairly tough.
But all those who were part of the team that helped to put Britain back together financially after the crash knew better.
Alastair Darling, chancellor during the crash, said dryly of her talent: “You put them (bankers) in a room with Shriti and lock the doors for a couple of hours.” And filling in the blanks, she gets the job done.
She first entered the Treasury in 1999 after 14 years of investment banking in the City.
Appointed to the Council of Economic Advisors, she led on business, competition innovation, productivity and looked after the government’s shareholdings and wider business affairs.
Gordon Brown brought her right into the heart of government – first appointing her as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State in the Department of International Development and then made her a life peer so she could be quizzed in parliament.
Later she moved to Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, as it was then and ended up becoming Parliamentary Secretary in the Cabinet Office.
Her close working relationship with Brown earned her a few sobriquets “Gordon Brown’s representative on earth” was one of the more kind.
The financial crash of 2008 threatened the banking system on which most of the world relied. Lady Vadera was critical in helping avert even greater disaster – she told the London Evening Standard in September 2012 just a year after that the government and the financial world was “staring into the abyss”.
The government at the time pumped £50 billion into propping up Royal Bank of Scotland (Natwest) and saving Lloyds and then slowly the wider economy began to recover. She said that Brown and Darling asked all the right questions, covered all the angles and were united in what to do.
“It now seems so obvious and right what to do what we did, but it was really not obvious then. If it had been that obvious why had no one done it?” Lady Vadera posed in 2012.
It took some time she said for the nightmares to vanish and a for a while ministers and advisors had to watch their Blackberry devices in case financial indicators began to move destructively.
“That tension and total awareness are hard to switch off. When I left in Autumn 2009, I had nightmares. It stays with you.”
Born in Uganda, the 58-year-old’s family initially found refuge in Bombay (Mumbai) in 1972 at the time of the expulsion.
Lady Vadera, who was the top Hammer Award winner at the GG2 Leadership Awards in 2017, said the poverty in India and a former nanny’s experience of not being able to invest her hard-earned money in her child’s education (her husband was flittering it away on himself) also made her think about the privilege she enjoyed as the daughter of wealthy tea planters.
Her parents left India for the UK and Lady Vadera attended Northwood College, an allgirls private school and graduated in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) from Somerville College (the late Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi’s alma mater).
