Quick Facts
Biography
Howard Covington is a British investment banker who was a founding shareholder and director of New Star Asset Management, the first non-academic chairman of the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences Management Committee and the inaugural chairman of the Alan Turing Institute.
Education
Covington was born in Eastbourne, England. He attended Eastbourne Grammar School and St John’s College, Cambridge. He won a double first in Natural Sciences 1974 and a distinction in Part III Mathematics in 1975.
Investment banking
After leaving university he held various positions, including government service, offshore oil contracting and commercial and investment banking. In 1986 he joined UK investment bank SG Warburg (the investment banking predecessor of UBS), becoming a director. He spent ten years advising public and private companies on strategy, capital raising, public takeovers, acquisitions and disposals. In 1996 he became head of the European investment banking business of US investment bank Wasserstein Perella.
Over 5 years Mr Covington built Wasserstein in Europe into a top 10 European mergers and acquisitions firm.
New Star Asset Management
On its foundation in 2000, Mr Covington joined New Star Asset Management
as a founder shareholder and director. He became chief executive in 2001. New Star grew from a loss-making start-up with a handful of employees to a profitable mainstream asset manager with £20 billion under management and 400 employees. It was listed on the London stock exchange in 2005 and was sold to Henderson in April 2009.
Positions held
Covington is, or has been: chair of the management committee of the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge, the UK’s national research institute for mathematical sciences (2008–present) ; a trustee of the Science Museum (2008 to 2016) ; a trustee of the Royal Institution (2011 to 2013) ; vice-chair of ClientEarth, Europe's leading not-for-profit environmental law firm (2014 – present) ; and chair of the Alan Turing Institute, the UK’s newly created national research institute for data science (2015–present). He has written on climate change for the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Nature GeoScience and Nature and advises investment firms on the impact of climate change on their business. He is a fellow of the Institute of Physics and an honorary fellow of the Isaac Newton Institute.