According to The Economist, Lord Adair Turner of Ecchinswell is the answer to every public-policy crisis in Britain. He has run commissions to sort out low pay. He was appointed to chair a committee on climate change that advises the government. “If there were a public inquiry into the existence of God,” the Economist writes “he’d either chair it or be produced as proof of a higher power”.

Lord Turner has combined careers in business, public policy and academia, and is a highly sought after keynote speaker in the corporate sector.

He was a Non Executive Director at Standard Chartered Bank (2006-2008); Vice Chairman of Merrill Lynch Europe (2000-2006); and, from 1995-1999, Director General of the Confederation of British Industry. He was with McKinsey & Co. from 1982 to 1995.

Lord Turner became a cross-bench member of the House of Lords in 2005 and was appointed Chair of the Pensions Commission from 2003 to 2006.

He became Chairman of the United Kingdom Financial Services Authority as the financial crisis broke in September 2008, and played a leading role in the redesign of the global banking and shadow banking regulation as Chairman of the International Financial Stability Board’s major policy committee.

Lord Turner is now a Senior Fellow of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, and at the Centre for Financial Studies in Frankfurt, and holds Visiting Professorships at the London School of Economics and at Cass Business School, City University.

Lord Turner is the author of Just Capital – The Liberal Economy (Macmillan, 2001), and Economics after the Crisis, (MIT Press, 2012). He is a Trustee and Chair of the Audit Committee at the British Museum.

Lord Turner studied history and economics at Caius College, Cambridge.