Rupert Pennant-Rea

The son of Peter Athelwold and Pauline Pennant-Rea, he was educated at the Peterhouse Boys' School, an Anglican church boarding school near Marandellas, Rhodesia (now Marondera, Zimbabwe), before attending Trinity College, Dublin,[1] and Manchester University,[1] where he received his MA degree. He is married, and has three children and one step-daughter.

Pennant-Rea joined the Bank of England in 1973 and remained until 1977, when he left to work for The Economist magazine.[1] He was the magazine's editor from 1986 until 1993.[2] Between 1993 and 1995, he again joined the Bank of England as Deputy Governor of the bank, under the governorship of Edward George;[1] he resigned following reports of an extramarital affair.

In 1994 he became a member of the influential Washington-based financial advisory body, the Group of Thirty.

In 1995 he became a director of a Canadian mining company, Sherritt International.. In March 1996, he was banned from the USA (along with his wife at the time and under-age children) because of Sherritt's commercial interests in Cuba, under the terms of the USA's Helms-Burton Act..

Pennant-Rea was chairman of British company The Stationery Office following its privatisation in 1996.[3] He was a British American Tobacco director from 1998 to 2007. He was also Chairman of Henderson Group and a non-executive director of Go-Ahead Group, a transport company, First Quantum and Gold Fields, both mining companies.

In July 2009, Pennant-Rea was appointed non-executive chairman of The Economist Group, having served as a non-executive director since August 2006.. In July 2018, after nine years, he was succeeded by Paul Deighton. He was Chairman of Royal London,[4] Chairman of PGI, an agriculture company, and a National Independent director of Times Newspapers.[5] Pennant-Rea recently became Chairman of a start-up, Learning with Experts https://www.learningwithexperts.com/, focused on life-long learning.

In the non-profit sector, Pennant-Rea is a trustee of the Marjorie Deane Foundation, the Wincott Foundation and the Speakers Trust,[6] the UK's leading public-speaking training charity. He was Chairman of the Shakespeare Schools Festival and is currently Chairman of Healing Venezuela.[7] Pennant-Rea has written a series of books about economics and a novel, Gold Foil.