In memoriam: Lord Paul Myners

Lord Myners, former Labour City minister, held several high-profile roles, including CEO and Chair of Gartmore, and chairmanships of Aspen Insurance, Marks and Spencer, Guardian Media Group, Land Securities and the Tate.

He was asked by Prime Minister Gordon Brown to play a key role in responding to the global financial crisis and worked tirelessly to do so. His engagement with the BVCA and the private equity and venture capital industry most notably included his influential review on institutional investment in the UK in 2001, known as the Myners Report, which questioned whether institutional investors acted in the best interests of their beneficiaries and prompted a watershed moment in how pension funds are run. He recommended that much greater attention was needed to strategic asset allocation, including consideration of asset classes such as private equity that trustees may have previously dismissed.

Alan Mackay, former chair of the BVCA and Managing Partner of GHO Capital, commented:

“I watched admiringly as Paul turned a modest asset manager at Gartmore into a major investment management group, and he was an early mover into a then-emerging asset class called private equity”.

His roles were wide-ranging, spanning many sectors. As an industry body we were grateful to him for continuing to raise issues relating to private equity’s benefits to the UK in his role in the House of Lords, and for working with us on the post-crisis regulatory environment and the industry’s reputation issues.