Standard Life gets new men on board

TWO corporate heavyweights have been appointed as non-executive directors on the board of insurance giant Standard Life.

Lord Norman Blackwell, a special advisor to KPMG’s corporate finance division, previously worked with Margaret Thatcher’s Downing Street Policy Unit and was also chairman of the Centre for Policy Studies.

He will now join fellow newcomer Gerry Grimstone, one of the leading investment bankers behind the privatisations of the 1990s and former head of banking at Schroders, on the board of the Edinburgh-based company.

Mr Grimstone is also a former Treasury civil servant and was briefly private secretary to David Owen when the former Labour MP was Health Secretary. He was responsible for looking after 20 privatisation schemes before joining Schroders.

And he shot into the limelight when he defended ConsGold against a bid from Anglo-American offshoot Minorco in a battle which lasted 18 months and involved regulatory control on four continents.

Standard Life is soon set to say goodbye to chairman John Trott who has been on the board for almost 30 years. He will be replaced by the chairman of brewer Scottish & Newcastle, Sir Brian Stewart.

And Giles Henderson, one of the current non-executive directors, has also said he is stepping down from the post to devote more time to his role of master at Pembroke College in Oxford.

A spokesman for Standard Life said: "We need to find replacements for Mr Trott and Mr Henderson and we believe we have found ones with the skills we wanted.

"The directors believe it is in the best interests of policyholders to remain mutual, and we are committed to staying mutual after these board changes. The new non-executives are pro-mutuality."

Retired teacher David Stonebanks is currently running a campaign to try to force an extraordinary general meeting where members would be able to vote on the company’s mutual standing.

Earlier in the week he said he had received 1300 signatures from members - more than the 1000 he needs - but later admitted he had no idea how many of them were genuine or were from people actually entitled to vote.