John Kingman
The Reformer
Changing the system from inside it, principle turned into change.
John Kingman is best read as The Reformer, a leader repeatedly deployed to fix institutions that others consider too tangled to touch. As a senior Treasury official he helped design the UK's response to the 2008 banking crisis, standing up UK Financial Investments to manage the state's stakes in rescued banks.
“We, in picking up the pieces, we necessarily discovered quite a lot about the institutions we were taking into public ownership. And what went wrong in the places that blew up was generally that they did, I think, have cultures that were unhealthy.”
“I think we've made a huge amount of progress. I mean, just to go back, when I did the review of the FRC, that organization, it was badly broken. I described it at the time as a slightly ramshackle house that needed to be rebuilt.”
“Of course we can. We're in a bit of a hole at the moment. We've got to dig ourselves out of that hole. But I think we know how economies grow. And the exciting thing is that we know more and more about how to grow sustainably. And a lot of the technologies that we need to grow sustainably are now economic.”
“Well, I was in the treasury at the time. It was a very intense period. It was very challenging. I think the team in the Treasury didn't absolutely amazing job. What you learn about people under pressure is a lot.”
Pull up a Chair with Bina Mehta: “In conversation with Bina Mehta, Chair, KPMG UK”
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