Richard Lambert
Quick Facts
Biography
Sir Richard Peter Lambert (born 23 September 1944) is the former Director-General of the CBI, and the former Chancellor of the University of Warwick .
Education
Lambert was born in north Buckinghamshire and grew up in Manchester, first attending a local grammar school, before, at the age of 13, going to Fettes College, an independent school for boys in the city of Edinburgh in Scotland, followed by Balliol College at the University of Oxford, where he studied History.
Business career
He joined the FT in 1966, editing the Lex Column in the paper in the 1970s. He became Financial Editor in 1979. From 1982 to 1983, he was the paper's New York correspondent. He was editor of the Financial Times from 1991 to 2001. From 1997 to 1998, he returned in New York and remained editor, where he set up a US version of the paper to challenge the Wall Street Journal.
From June 2003 to March 2006, he was one of the nine members of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England, which sets the interest rate for the British pound.
CBI
He became Director-General of the Confederation of British Industry on 1 July 2006. He has written Government reports on BBC News 24 and chaired the Lambert Review on the relationship between higher education and business.
He was replaced by John Cridland as head of the CBI on 1 February 2011.
Honours
He was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of York in 2007. He has other honorary degrees from City University, the University of Warwick, Brighton University and the University of Exeter.
He was appointed Chancellor of the University of Warwick on 19 March 2008. He formally took up the position on 1 August 2008, and was officially installed on 10 December of the same year. After eight years as Chancellor, Lambert concluded his term at the end of the 2015-16 academic year and will be formally succeeded by Catherine Ashton.
He was knighted in the 2011 New Year Honours for service to business.
Personal life
He married Harriet Murray-Browne in 1973 and has two children. Lambert is also on the board of the British Museum.