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Damon Buffini
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“So, pre career, I would definitely say education is absolutely crucial. My journey obviously reflects that. Then I sort of slightly repeat a couple of the things I said before. I think there's no reason why you can't do it. So think big. I think that's so important. My journey, as I taired, I was there in Leicester and then 10 years later I was in the city and I was there for 30 years and that's a bedrock of the career. So think big. Do something you enjoy. Have some fun. It only comes around run, so really have some fun. And then there's a great quote by like I think my bin Rald Reagan, I'm not sure, but he said there were three types of people. There are people that make things happen. There are people that watch things happen and there are people that wonder what happened.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You have an obligation, a responsibility to ensure that as many other people could receive that as you do so they can go on to make a difference and help other people get through the door and up the ladder. Because as you said, that list goes back nearly 100 years. And the early people on that list created the foundation to enable me to go to whole business school. And I would hope that I could do the same for others.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“84 agents of change goes back to the 1930s. There are 84 people on our list during the 1930s. And when you look at the experience I had, or I think about the experience I had in America, and it was, as I said, it was a slightly, it is a divided country, it's very difficult. Some of this is for people of color and mixed race to do well. You look at that list and I thought to myself, well, that's what I think. What about those people that are on that list from the 1930s and 40s and 50s and 60s? So it made me feel incredibly humble to be part of that list. It also made me reflect on, yes, the power of education, but if you've been received education, you've been lucky enough to receive it and done well.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so you might know Charles, what happens is you get a letter that comes through the post. And this letter is addressed private and confidential, only be opened by the addressee. So I come home one day and my wife says, oh, there's something in your office you might want to go and look at. Of course, she'd opened it. It came out completely out of the blue. I had absolutely no idea how it happened, why it happened. It just arrived. So that was very, very surprising. And the beauty of that is that you get to be knighted by, I was knighted by Prince Charles at the time. And your family, you get to come along, right? And that my wife came along and my children came along. And that was a really... Emotional and happy occasion, that's great. And my mom was still alive, so she got to witness her as well. So that was brilliant.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So BBC Commercial, our role is to, where's appropriate, is to take BBC product, BBC services, BBC brand, and commercialize that and create more income, which will then go back into the license fee and supporting the license fee to enable the BBC to create great content and create a place to distribute it, which is the iPhone. So that's the role of the BBC commercial, which is what I chair. And I think it's important for the country that we sort of get it right because if you think about that, 90% reach and 400 million. It has to be able to operate in the modern world.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Historically, you've had to watch TV or listen to radio when it was broadcast to you and you had to watch it in a particular place. Now you can watch whatever you want to watch wherever, whenever. That's what streaming means. That's the digital revolution. So the BBC has to react to that. The BBC has to create great content. Historically, it has been brilliant at producing great content. It has to continue to do that for all its audiences. And it has to be able to... Distribute it and allow people to watch it when they want to watch it and where they want to watch it. That's the iPlayer. So it is a really, it's a time of total change in the TV radio broadcast industry.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“BBC is an extraordinary organisation. So it's been around for 100 years. Not many organisations have been around for 100 years. It reaches every week, 90% of the UK population 9% use the BBC. 400 million people outside of the UK interrupt with the BBC every week. So it's an exemplar and a real distributor of British values around the world But right now it's an unprecedented time. And again, again, it's an example of disruption.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“70% of them are outside of London, 70% of them are small. The really interesting aspect of that is that, of course, you'd expect us to be funding opera, ballet, theatre. But we also funded cinema, bingo halls, museums, railways, all sorts of different activities. So that really said to me was, okay, culture really means different things to different people, right? So that whole cultural landscape is so bigger and so broader than you might expect. It's so important to people when they go out into their local community. What do they do affected with their spare time? And the fact the Culture Recovery Fund enabled them to continue to do that for this country, I think it's a really big deal.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We established a model which was like a private equity fund, but we only had four months to actually raise it and distribute it and make sure we got all the money back. But that was quite successful. So we ended up funding $5,000 organizations across country.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You hear the word existential. It's an existential crisis quite often. But if you go back to 2020, this was an existential crisis. So with organizations that rely on people coming through the door, they were closed. It's the first time theatres, I think, have been closed since Cromwell's time. They actually remained open during the blitz, right? So this is really, really difficult time. And it was obvious that pretty much every institution in the country would fail if there wasn't some form of intervention. So the fact that the government stepped up and wrote 2 billion pound check was extraordinary and incredibly needed. And our role as the Culture Recovery Fund board, which I chaired, was to ensure that the money got to the right place in a timely fashion because organizations were absolutely on the brink, but because it was taxpayers' money, it had to be done efficiently and effectively. So it's £2 billion of taxpayers' money.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Element which is excellent and the ability to provide people with access to an art form that they might not otherwise have the opportunity to see. That's why the National Theatre is so great.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Undisputably, and the national theatre is really in the center of that. It's also quite an innovative place. So we reached 9 million people last year. So a million people came to the South Bank physically to watch our plays, productions, but 8 million saw them digitally. And that's completely new. Over 10 years ago, that would not have been the case at all. And we're also using innovation, digital innovation to reach as many young people as we possibly can. So we now have a digital platform in every state school, state secondary school for free. That's 3,000, no, 3,000 state schools. And we've committed that we are going to ensure that every young person before they leave school has an experience of the national theater. So you combine what we, the artistic.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So The National Theater is great because every year we produce 20 and 20 plays on So I've got to choose from over 100. Which is, I've seen most of them, some of them twice, some of them I'm glad I saw twice, some of them wish I hadn't, but nevertheless, most of the time they're great. So we've had plays like the Lehman Trilogy, Amadeus. At the moment, we've got Deer England. About Gav South Day, it's great. The variety is brilliant, the artistic standards fantastic. And the National Theatre really exemplifies what is great about the UK. We are so world leaders in the creative industries.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Opportunity for something like 48,000 hours of volunteering. So the provision of the ability to provide these skills, these social enterprises will have access to. I think that's why the social business trust has been so successful.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Encouraging one was that, yes, you could apply those skills and it did work, not all the time, but did create some pretty big social enterprise, something that you mentioned. But the other benefit is that the big companies, the employers, found out that their people really enjoyed it and really found incredibly beneficial to give their time, but their expertise is something that made a difference in society. Because a lot of these social enterprises are providing skills and services and policy economy that nobody else is providing those services, but it's absolutely essential. So to be able to use your day job to make a difference in those places was something that employees found really, really beneficial and became, for some of these companies, a really good recruiting tool. So you mentioned the social business trust is it is still going, very successful. I think it's now held 2.7 million people, but it's also provided.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I didn't know what a social enterprise was. So I met Adele Blakeborough in 2005. And she sort of explained that she was running this social enterprise. It was helping, I think, young people in education or something like that. But she had a problem and her problem was scaling up. And she said, well, this is really endemic, social enterprise world. These organizations that have got a mission at their heart, they do make money, but they invest it all back into the mission. They just can't get bigger. And the reason they can't get bigger, she said, was that they don't have access to the normal skills, services that big companies have. So he said, well, okay, we wanted together. We said, okay, I wonder what would happen if we encouraged persuaded cajoled some big businesses to give money, but really predominantly time that they would, then we'd apply to social enterprises, wonder whether we could make them bigger, scale them up. So that's what was the genesis of social business trust. And two things happen that we're really quite...”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In all the walks of life that we've supported. And also we've worked with a lot of people in partnership. So it's very encouraging when you work with people that really share the same mindset and have the same motivation as we do.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We set up to do things to give young people a fair crack of the whip. We're now whether that's access to the arts, whether that's access to education in schools. So we support academies in this country, apprenticeships in this country. We're supporting young people in employment. We've helped built schools with others outside this country in Africa. We sponsored young people through ballet school, all sorts of things. And it's really all about young people giving them opportunities and then ensuring that when they are qualified, the door is open for them so they can actually use those qualifications to move forward. And that's what when you say what has been uplifting moments, I mean, there's a huge amount, but what we really, what really motivates us when we see young people progressing,”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You mentioned that we started together, myself, my wife. We've been managed for 35 years, I think, nearly 35 years. And we believe in, we've been the beneficiaries of education in this country Free education. When I look back and say, I went through grammar school, university, and I didn't pay a pen. It was all free funded by the taxpayer. What a fantastic mechanism for social mobility. My wife is the same. We live in this country. We're really proud to be British. We also understand the power of education, so access to education and access to the opportunities thereafter. So that's what our foundation does.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They took their responsibility looking after the shareholders' money incredibly importantly. And that's a good lesson to learn. I think where private markets have the edge is just the speed of movement. Just the speed of movement and the ability to do things in a way which grass opportunities when they're there. So trying to combine those two elements would be for any company or private would be a good thing.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, if you can create a business model that really works, you can access effectively billions of customers immediately to sell me your product. So you have to be willing to change really, really quickly. And as I imagine, is really definitely in that space. I think in terms of private and public, I think when you have a disaggregated shareholder model like you do in public companies, what I learned as the governance model is really important. So I was very impressed with, I'd never been on the board of public company before, so go onto the board of Schroeders. I was really impressed with the governance model there, the fact that...”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, Schroeder's is no different to any other business at the moment, every business is being disrupted. Schroeder has a benefit that it has a family shareholder who's been there for 300 years, maybe more, which gives them the ability to make long-term decisions. But nevertheless, because of the internet, because of transparency in pricing, because everybody can access your customers, the business model is being disrupted across asset management. And so it's like every business. When I was growing up, I spent a bit of time working at the gas board and the whole of industry was dominated by these big companies. And like, you know, Hansen Trust, ICR, Big was the thing. Big, big ate the small and you'd always going to win if you could have that sort of scale. That's completely changed now. Business models are being so destructive. It's the fast that really eat the slow.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it was a real privilege to join the main border of Schroeder. So, having started there as a junior. In Showdentures, to be asked to join the main board by Mike Dobson, it was a real privilege. And I'd worked with Govy Mallenclod and with Bruno Schroeder, they'd been part of the Schroeder Ventures Pamira story. So that was great.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And in an industry that was growing, so it was very exciting, very dynamic. Things were changing. We learned a huge amount. But as a partnership We all got together every year. We were in an environment which we just enjoyed being in whether that was because we felt of ourselves as a family because we knew everybody's extended family because we've been together for so long. It was all part of the firm.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We were just a we were a group of relatively young professionals Who are starting out who came together in the late 80s, and we were all together for pretty much 30 years.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I went from effectively living in the council state in Thurnby at Lodge and Leicester to being a partner of its show adventures in 10 years. And so thinking big, taking step by step, you definitely have to do that. I think people from any background, certainly people from my background, you have to take the opportunities that present it to you. There are no safety nets. There's no retakes. There's no gap year. So if someone offers you an opportunity, you've got to grasp it with both hands and really make a go of it. I really do think that having a persona where people enjoy working with you when you walk into a room, people are glad you're in it because for some people that is definitely not true. I think you just get more out of people. So for me, they're the...”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But what's made me really proud about that Now I've retired from Pamira. It goes from strength to strength. We built it as a partnership. So it wasn't me. It was a lot of people. And I think we had a lot of fun. So that's what stays with me from my Premier days. Your second question was an 18 to 24 year old starting out. If I look back on education going to NK and going to Pomera. What that system to me is you should be thinking big. The opportunities are really there. And yeah, you need to take them step by step.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We used to get a lot of mad ideas, and eventually we said to, we had a meeting of the partners, and we could go all around this table. The firm is so small. We said, look, next person who comes in with a mad idea, you know, we just got to tell them, forget it. So one of my partners took that literally. And then he said, look, he said to this person in front of him, my advice to you is don't give up your day job. And with that, James Dyson took his vacuum cleaner and left our office. So we had our fair share of mistakes. But over time, we really developed as a firm.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it was based on that bedrock of trust. So that was trust your partners to do the right thing, to do the right thing for your clients, for your investors, for the firm, for other partners and for people that work with you. Even if the partners had retired, you're expected to treat them with the way that they were treated when they're in the firm. So that was really fundamental to how we grew the business. We also learned a lot, as you can imagine, going from a firm that had 500 million under management to nearly 30 billion. We did a lot. We did very well. We made some mistakes. I remember one of our partners in the really early days.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And a lot of the partners were there for, I was there for 27 years. A lot of the partners were there for 27, 30 years. And we built the firm based on respecting everybody in the firm. We call ourselves Pomera because that meant something surprising and different. And we wanted to have a surprising and different culture.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So let me give you a little bit about Short Adventures and Meira, because everyone sees Pera as it is now, but actually in 1988, it was tiny. The industry was tiny, the firm was small, it was a group of what I would consider to be outside as really. It was unusual. So in the early 90s, 30% of our partners were women in the early 90s. So very progressive, pretty diverse. It was an industry that was really forming, but it was quite small. So we spent the first six or seven years as a firm. Really, investing small companies, small transactions. If you really wanted to earn a lot of money, you wouldn't have gone into private equity and venture capital at that time. You would have gone into investment banking or law. But we really stuck with it. And we created a partnership which was based on trust and respect.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that really has stuck with me. It's obvious to me throughout my whole career that people really do like to work with people they like. And that's been something that's really been a driver for me and Pamira as we built the firm, really treat people as you'd want to be treated yourself.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The other aspect of that is I turned up, had a huge amount of interviews, I met every partner, it was a very small firm. I thought I did really well. They offered me the job, great, great. I thought I was really absolutely brilliant at that time. And now six months later, I sat down with the team and said, well, look, you can tell me now. Why did I get the job? Was it my sort of financial acumen or was it the fact that I was so great at strategy? What was it? And they said, well, no, everybody was absolutely the same. But you were the only one, and when you came out of the elevator, you said hello to the receptionist. And she said, she went straight back to the partner's office and said, Look, you've got to recruit this guy”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“they need different sorts of people, they need people that are more entrepreneurial, different backgrounds. And so they started something called Shrod Adventures, which they were still quite blue-blooded. And they said, well, you know, that's where the entrepreneurs can sort of go. And that's what I was interviewed for. So I remember I met Nit Ferguson and Wing Bischoff. So Wim Bischoff, who was the chief exec at the time, they came to Harvard to recruit. They held a cocktail party. I was five minutes early and everybody else was. Minutes late. So I had 15 minutes with Nick Ferguson Wimbish off. And they asked me to come for an interview in London. So that was, and I was there for 27 years after that. So turning up five minutes early really made a big difference to my life.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So when I left university in 84, the city was really close to people from my background. I mean, it was an old school tie. I think I burnt my school tie or someone had burnt it for me. So that was just no chance. And that's why I went to LEK. I thought LEK was a really great place to start in the city or associated with the city. Went to, as MS said, I went to Harvard Business School. But by 1988, the city had really changed. Big bang had happened The Americans have come, competition was changing, all sorts of different opportunities. And so Schroeder's really had to change”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“broader vision, broader understanding of what is achievable, where industry was going, if you remember, this was the time where stock markets were starting to boom, barriers were coming down across the globe, studying business, so half of business school was a really great opportunity.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The division in that country is really stark. The racial division is absolutely there. It's there all the time. I encountered it and I found that very difficult. I think as my wife is Chinese and I think actually living in America, certainly in the 80s, there's a mixed-race couple been very, very tough. So educationally, similar places. You meet lots of different people. You managed to understand work with different people from different environments. It's a real benefit. Of course, going to America really opens your eyes as to the international nature of business and the global... economy it was just a fantastic experience in the mid 80s”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even though growing up in Leicester, you'd encountered all this pretty much every single racial slur you could imagine from the age of five. Actually dealing with that in Cambridge was difficult because it wasn't absolutely upfront in your face, but you had to deal with it. So it really made you more resilient. I think the education system in the US, postgrad is quite formative because you're there and you're really enjoying what you're doing. I think the country itself. For me, coming from my background, which as I said, my mother is white, my grandparents white.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are some challenges that you encounter at Cambridge and the early 80s. There were very many people like me there. Most of people like me look like me were African princes, to be honest. And so I came across some sort of social barriers so people would exclude me from things because they'd never really come across anyone like me from my background or my color. So that was difficult.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you go from a firm bid large estate, which is where I was brought up to the colleges in Cambridge, they are absolutely beautiful, stunning. For me, it was like the moon. It was just so dramatically different. And the people were very different as well there, very academic. I was concerned when I went there that they'd all be absolute geniuses. Of course, some of them are, but most of them are not. All of a sudden you find your way. Harvard Business School was different in that it was much more international. It was business finance. I really, really enjoyed that aspect of it. Again, it's a beautiful place to study, beautiful place to study on the banks of the Charles.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And again, I said, Well, fantastic. I left the office and said, well, you know, where's Harvard Business School? And what is that? I did a bit of research and I got in and went to Harvard Business School. So that's the educational journey.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I actually left Cambridge without a job because I thought that would be the wrong thing to do. And then I stumbled upon this very small consulting firm called the LEK Partnership. I think I was employee number between employee number 10 and 20. They now have offices all around the world. They're incredibly successful. And they were consulting and they were starting to create a practice in merged and acquisitions really early mergers and acquisitions consulting. I really enjoyed that. I thought it was fantastic. The consulting bit, the analytical bit, I wasn't so good at. I'm actually not very good at numbers. But that was really exciting. And then they said, well, if you can get into Harvard Business School, we'll sponsor you to go.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I got to a situation where I did quite well in my levels and they said to me, well, why don't you think about Cambridge? And I said, well, where's that? I said, well, you know, you should really think about it. So, okay, well, it's not really not for me, no doubt. But I'll give it a go and did quite well in the exams. And I went, they said, well, come for an interview. So I went for an interview. It's the first time I've been to Cambridge. And I met someone called Peter Linham, who became my tutor. He was like Dumbledore before Harry Potter. He's passed away now. Blast Amus from he's wearing a cloak. And he thought he saw something in me that I would fit there. So that's how I got to Cambridge. I did law at Cambridge. The reason I did law is I thought that would be a good profession to embark on. I would have been a terrible lawyer. Awful.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For the teachers were really focused. If you wanted to work, they would help you. And at some stage, I just thought, well, look, if I'm going to progress, I really do need to buckle down and work a bit harder. So I did. I was never the brightest in our class. It was really 10% inspiration, 90% perspiration, as they say.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If your parents were, I don't know, market traders went to another, but if you came from a councillor state like I did, you went to Gateway Grammar. So it was really socially stratified. So you can imagine the grammar school I went to was full of very, very bright but very, very hard to manage young people, boys or boys. So for instance, we set the supply teachers blazer on fire with the Bunsen burner. We had pre-furb. We had pre-fab buildings on the roof and someone tried to set those on fire. So it was really tough. 50% of all boys that went there dropped out before they did their O-levels 416 go and work in the factories. So it was very tough. It was an environment where it was a little bit out of control”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Education is a passport, right? It definitely is. And as I mentioned, my family certainly understood that. And so when I passed the 11 plus, they were delighted. I had no idea what it was. And they clearly understood that was the first step in the journey. Now, Lester's a very strange place. It's ringed by councillor states. So when I went to grammar school, it wasn't actually... It was a social structure that was informal. Went to a few parents were a doctor or a dentist or professional, you went to one gram school.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably the only person of color on our estate until Idi Armin ejected the Asians in the early 70s and we moved to our cancer state in 64. So I'm probably the only personal color on our estate. So that had a real effect on me, if you can imagine. Pretty tough place, but it was really dynamic, it was colorful. My recollection of it is tough, but it was a really cohesive community. Everybody went to the local pub, everyone knew each other. So it's not a bad environment.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Education. It's very bright, but just didn't finish it. And so in our household, education was absolutely the paramount driver. They really realized the power of education in getting you from one place to another, and they hadn't had that benefit. So that was one real driver in our family. The other driver was that I used to go to school on the bus and the whole estate used to go to work. The work ethic was incredible. So they were all workers in factories and the textile factories, the shoe making factories. They all used to go to work on the bus, come home on the bus. And it was just, it seemed to me that everybody had that work ethic. And that was fantastic to see. And that really rubbed off on me and still that working ethos. And then as I sort of alluded to, I was.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I can. It's a long time ago, Charles, but as you said, my father was a black serviceman and my mother met him. There were some bases outside of Leicester. They got together, but he had to go back to America. And at the time, really mixed relationships, mixed marriages were actually illegal in America, so my mother decided to stay in Leicester. So I was brought up on a council estate by a single mother, just myself and my sister and my mother with my grandparents. My mother's white. She's English, Irish. My grandparents are completely white, and the whole councillor state was effectively completely white. So I was brought up in a really interesting working class background on a working class councillor state. My grandparents, their background was service, so they were in service. So upstairs and downstairs, they were downstairs. And my mother didn't really finish her.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Sir Damon Buffini: Leicester Council Estate to Leading British Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source