Ex-Treasury minister Sassoon steps into a top role at Jardine
FORMER Treasury minister Lord Sassoon has re-entered the private sector by taking a senior job at Asia-focused conglomerate Jardine Matheson.
Sassoon will take up his new executive role, based in London, on 14 January. He is also being lined up to take board seats on the firm’s other listed companies, which include insurance group Jardine Lloyd Thomson.
Sassoon spent almost a decade at the Treasury, as a civil servant, an ambassador for the City and later a minister.
He defected to the Conservatives in 2008, advising George Osborne on financial regulation, and when the coalition won power, taking a life peerage and the post of commercial secretary to the Treasury.
The Oxford graduate used his financial experience, gained during spells at SG Warburg and KPMG, to help sculpt the Treasury’s recent overhaul of financial regulation and the FSA’s demise.
However Sassoon lost out in the government’s September reshuffle, when it was announced that Locog boss Paul Deighton would replace him at the start of 2013.
The 57-year-old had been tipped to replace Sir Mervyn King as governor of the Bank of England.
“His expert knowledge and extensive experience in the business, government and financial sectors will be of great value to the group,” said Jardine chairman Sir Henry Keswick.