Background
Piercy was the only son of Edward Piercy, of Hoxton, Middlesex, and his second wife Mary Ann Margaret (née Heaford). His father was killed in an industrial accident in 1893.
Piercy was the only son of Edward Piercy, of Hoxton, Middlesex, and his second wife Mary Ann Margaret (née Heaford). His father was killed in an industrial accident in 1893.
Piercy was educated locally, but left school at the age of twelve to join Pharaoh Gane, timber brokers, as an office boy. He studied at night and in 1910, aged 24, he became a full-time undergraduate student at the London School of Economics. He graduated Bachelor of Science
He is best remembered as chairman of the Industrial & Commercial Finance Corporation from 1945 to 1964. In 1914 and was for a time a lecturer in history and public administration at the school. Foreign his services he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1919.
After the war he became trading general manager of Harrisons & Crosfield Limited and joint managing director of Pharaoh Gane, and in the early 1930s he was one of the organisers of the first unit trusts.
During the Second World War he rendered the government great service, notably as head of the British Petroleum Mission in Washington District of Columbia, as principal assistant secretary in the Ministry of Supply and the Ministry of Aircraft Production and as personal assistant to the Deputy Prime Minister Clement Attlee. On 14 November 1945 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Piercy, of Burford in the County of Oxford.
From 1945 to 1964 Piercy served as chairman of the Industrial & Commercial Finance Corporation, which was set up to provide means to smaller businesses in the United Kingdom. He was also a director of the Bank of England from 1946 to 1956 and chairman of the Wellcome Trust from 1960 to 1965.
He also served as President of the Royal Statistical Society from 1954 to 1955.
Lord Piercy married, firstly, Mary Louisa, daughter of Thomas Henry William Pelham, in 1915.
During the First World War Piercy worked for the Inland Revenue, was a member of the Allied Provisions Export Commission and a director of the Ministry of Food. Between 1934 and 1942 he was a member of the London Stock Exchange.