Lord Gerry Grimstone

     Minister for Investment, DIT and BEIS

     Lord Gerry Grimstone was appointed on 18 March 2020 as the Minister for Investment jointly at the Department for International Trade (DIT)           and the Department for Business, Energy and  Industrial Strategy (BEIS). 

He also has Ministerial responsibility for the Office for Investment in 10 Downing St. He is DIT’s representative for all business in the House of Lords. His Ministerial duties in BEIS also include responsibility for certain sectors including, steel, automotive, and the professional and business services sector.

Before entering politics, Lord Gerry had an extensive business career. He is the immediate past Chairman of Barclays Bank plc and also of Standard Life Aberdeen, the UK’s largest savings and investments business. He was an Independent Non-Executive Board Member of Deloitte North South Europe, a member of Deloitte’s Global Independent Non Executive Advisory Committee, and also of their UK Oversight Board. He was a Senior Adviser to Fenchurch Advisory Partners and was a member of the International Advisory Network of Natixis, the French financial services group. He was a Senior Adviser to Blue Prism, a global leader in Robotic Process Automation. 

Within the UK, Lord Gerry has had a long history of serving the Ministry of Defence spanning 20 years. He sat on the Defence Board chaired by the Defence Secretary as its Lead Non-Executive. The Defence Board is the senior decision-taking body in the MoD. Lord Gerry served under 6 Defence Secretaries.

From 2012-2015, Lord Gerry served as the Chairman of TheCityUK, the representative body for the financial and professional services industry in the UK. He was a member of HM Treasury's Financial Services Trade and Investment Board. 

Lord Gerry has been deeply involved in UK-China and UK-India relations. He chaired the TheCityUK-CBBC China Market Advisory Group which helped coordinate financial and related professional  services activity between the UK and China. He chaired Heng An Standard Life, an Insurance and Pensions company with branches in over 80 cities throughout China. In India, he sat for many years on the Board of HDFC Life, which is one of India’s largest life assurance companies. He was the UK chairman of the India-UK Financial Partnership and also of the UK-India CEO Forum both of which were set up by the Indian and British Governments.

In the Gulf, Lord Gerry was the Board Adviser to the Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank. He also sat on the Board of Investcorp, a leading global provider and manager of alternative investment products headquartered in Bahrain. He chaired Aberdeen Standard Investcorp Infrastructure Partners which invests in social and core infrastructure projects in Gulf Co-operation Council countries. In Saudi Arabia, he led, for the Prime Minister and the Crown Prince, the private sector group advising the Kingdom on corporatisation and privatisation. 

He was previously a senior investment banker at Schroders and ran major businesses in London, New York and Asia Pacific. He specialised in mergers and acquisitions and capital-raising for major companies worldwide. Prior to that, he was an official in HM Treasury where he was responsible for privatisation and policy towards state-owned enterprises.

Lord Grimstone of Boscobel was knighted in 2014 for public service, particularly to Defence and Business.