WITH nearly 40 years of experience spanning public and private sectors, in the UK and internationally, Shriti Vadera, chair of insurance giant Prudential plc, has emerged as one of the most influential business leaders in the country. Recently, she was part of an independent panel of ten city leaders who contributed to a review of financial services, launched by the Labour party to set out future policy priorities for the financial services industry. Critics believe that the city has taken a knock following Brexit, with companies picking the likes of Wall Street over London for new listings. As the ruling Conservatives trail badly behind Labour in opinion polls before a general election expected later this year, we could see Vadera, who was a member of the last Labour government, playing a significant role again in propping up the UK economy. She served as a minister under former premier Gordon Brown, jointly in the Cabinet Office and in the International Development and Business departments from 2007-2009, leading the UK government’s response to the financial crisis. She was made Baroness Vadera of Holland Park (London) and elevated to the House of Lords so she could be a fully functional minister of state. The Daily Telegraph at the time described her as “the woman Gordon Brown trusts more than any other in his government.”. She was a key architect of its pioneering bank recapitalisation and funding plan in 2008 and helped design the outcomes of the G20 London Summit in 2009, when the grouping of 19 countries and the EU declared itself the primary venue for international economic and financial cooperation. Vadera stepped down as a minister in 2009 to take up a new role advising the G20 from Downing Street. Between 2010 and 2015, she undertook a wide range of assignments, such as advising the South Korean Chair of the G20, two European countries on the Eurozone and banking crisis, the African Development Bank on infrastructure financing and a number of global investors and sovereign wealth funds on strategy and economic and market developments. She also helped the UK banking sector to pick its way through the challenges resulting from Brexit, serving as the chair of the European Financial Services Chairmen’s Advisory Committee, a group of 15 chairpersons and chief executives set up to act as a sounding board for Ministers during the EU exit negotiations. Now, she contributes her wide-ranging experience in economics, public policy and strategy into global and emerging markets and the macro-political and economic environment. Last June, she was appointed as co-chair of the Private Sector Investment Lab, charged with developing solutions to address the barriers to private sector investment in emerging markets. It was one of the first initiatives of Ajay Banga, president of the World Bank Group, who took over the management of the bank in June 2023 on a pledge to boost its lending firepower by encouraging greater private investment in the fight against climate change. “I am delighted that Ajay Banga is prioritising how the World Bank can leverage and crowd in private finance that will not otherwise be available for global public goods like climate transition, growth and poverty reduction, and that he is focused on delivery and implementation, moving beyond promises and pledges to credible execution,” Vadera commented. “Every action and every penny from every actor counts, and we should prioritise the solutions and actions that are scalable, speedy, and replicable. Our focus will be on delivery and implementation to try and have a real impact on the ground,” she added. She also serves as the chair of Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), the first female and person of colour to be in that position at the prestigious theatre organisation. Vadera took the helm at the RSC in August 2021, after more than a year of intermittent coronavirus restrictions have left many theatre and other arts organisations reeling. Vadera said she had imagined Shakespeare in Uganda and India where she grew up, with the plays “giving me the courage to aspire to possibilities that transformed my life”.
“I am passionate about the arts and the impact they can have on the lives of individuals and communities. I have long been a supporter of the RSC, a company rooted in history and which is modern, innovative and dynamic, uniquely national but also global,” she added. Vadera was also the first woman to head a major British bank, when she served as the chair of Santander UK from March 2015 to October 2020. Born in Uganda in 1962 to Indian Gujarati parents, her family fled the country following Idi Amin’s expulsion of Ugandan Asians. They initially found refuge in Bombay (Mumbai) in 1972, and eventually moved to Northwood in north-west London. She started her career as an investment banker for 14 years at SG Warburg/UBS with a particular focus on emerging market, and debt relief and restructuring. She joined the HM Treasury’s Council of Economic Advisers in 1999, leading on policy areas for business, productivity, private finance, and international development issues. She became a close adviser to the then chancellor Brown, and when he succeeded Tony Blair as prime minister in June 2007. Lady Vadera, who was the top Hammer Award winner at the GG2 Leadership Awards in 2017, also has extensive boardroom experience, serving as nonexecutive director of the global pharmaceuticals group AstraZeneca from 2011 to 2018, and the international mining company BHP Billiton from 2010 to 2020. She was a trustee of Oxfam from 2000 to 2005 and currently serves as senior adviser co-chair at leading think tank Chatham House and a board member of Institute of International Finance, the trade group for the global financial services industry.