Philip Augar Keynote Speaker

Philip Augar is an author and former investment banker. A PhD in History, he has been speaking, writing and broadcasting about the challenges of modern capitalism and banking for twenty years. Philip has also held a number of advisory and non-executive roles in the public and private sectors.

After leaving Schroders, where he was part of the team that negotiated Citigroup’s $2.2bn purchase of the British investment bank, he wrote his first book, The Death of Gentlemanly Capitalism in 2000. This acclaimed examination of the decline of British merchant banks during the 80’s and 90’s set Philip on a committed literary track.

It was followed in 2002 by The Rise of the Player Manager, in 2005 by The Greed Merchants and in 2009 by Chasing Alpha (Reckless in paperback). In 2018, Philip released his latest work, The Bank That Lived a Little: Barclays in the Age of the Very Free Market. He writes for the Financial Times and other publications and appears regularly on BBC radio and television.

From 2004-2010, Philip served as non-exec board member at the Department of Education, and then from 2010-2014 at the Home Office, where he was also chair of UK Border Agency. He was a member of the cross-party Future of Banking Commission chaired by David Davis MP in 2010, advised the Scottish government inquiry into the banking crisis, served as an independent non-exec at KPMG and sat on the board of TSB plc. In 2018, he was appointed by the Prime Minister to chair the panel reviewing post-18 education for her government.