The memorial lecture for 2009 was delivered by John Kay. John is one of Britain’s leading economists. He has been a professor at London Business School and Oxford University and is a Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford and a Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society of Edinburgh and a member of the Scottish Government’s Council of Economic Advisers.
He was founding chairman of a successful business and has been a director of several financial companies, including Halifax plc.For more than twenty years he has been Investment Officer of Oxford’s wealthiest college. He combines his academic credentials and practical experience with the ability to express complex ideas clearly and with dry humour, which he does through a weekly column in the Financial Times.
He lives in London, Oxfordshire and the south of France and many of his ideas are worked out during long walks in the mountains behind the French Riviera.