Background
McDonald was born in Stockton-on-Tees, Company Durham, the daughter of Doctor HD McDonald, an Irish protestant minister.
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Oonagh McDonald
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The family moved to London and she was educated at East Barnet Grammar School and King"s College London, where she gained a Master"s degree in Theology in 1962 and a Doctor of Philosophy in 1974.
Career
She worked variously as a teacher, lecturer, researcher and management consultant. She taught philosophy at the University of Bristol from 1965-1976. Her marriage to Richard Whitehouse ended in divorce.
McDonald unsuccessfully contested the seat of South Gloucestershire as the Labour Party candidate at both the February 1974 and October 1974 general elections.
She became Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the Rt Honorary Joel Barnett (now Lord Barnett) in 1977. She was then Opposition Spokesman on Defence from 1981–1983, and then Opposition Spokesman on Treasury and Economic Affairs from 1983-1987.
At the 1987 general election she lost Thurrock to the Conservative candidate Timothy Janman. In 1998, McDonald was named Commander of the British Empire (awarded for services to financial regulation and business).Debretts People of Today/>
She has undertaken numerous consultancy projects on financial regulation and the development of private pensions for the Asian Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund, United States Agency for International Development and the British Know-How Fund in Russia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Brunei and Moldova.
She was Gwilym Gibbon Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford and wrote The Future of Whitehall, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1992 and is also the author of Parliament at Work, Methuen, 1989 and The Future of Retail Banking in Europe: A View from the Top, with Professor Kevin Keasey, John Wiley & Sons, 2002, and numerous research papers for a variety of clients including Deloitte"s and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
In 2013, Bloomsbury Academic Press published her book "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Turning the American Dream into a Nightmare". She is currently a Visiting Fellow, International Institute of Banking & Financial Services, University of Leeds. She also edits the Journal of Financial Regulation & Compliance.
In 1998, she was awarded the Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to financial regulation and business.
She has been the Chair of the Fairbanking Mark Assessment Panel for the Fairbanking Foundation since November 2013.
Membership
47th United Kingdom Parliament. 48th United Kingdom Parliament. 49th United Kingdom Parliament]
She also served as a member of the Financial Services Commission in Gibraltar and was a senior consultant on international regulatory and public policy issues.
She was elected Member of Parliament for Thurrock in the 1976 by-election following the death of Hugh Delargy.
McDonald is currently a director of the British Portfolio Trust, Complaints Commissioner for the London Metal Exchange, Institute of Civil Engineers Futures and Virt-x and a member of International Monetary Fund"s Expert Roster. She was previously a director of the United Kingdom Financial Services Authority (formerly the Securities and Investments Board), a director of the General Insurance Standards Council, a director of Skandia Insurance Company Limited, a director of the Financial Services Ombudsman Scheme, a director of the Investors Compensation Scheme and of Scottish Provident (until demutualised and sold to Abbey National in 2001), and a member of the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission.
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Born
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Nationality
United Kingdom -
Religion
Protestant -
Political Party
Labour Party