Peter Sands, bank executive. Harkness Fellow, Harvard University.
Background
Peter Sands was born in the United Kingdom on 8 January 1962 to British parents who had themselves been born in Asia. His father, was born in Malaya, a British colony until 1957, where his grandfather ran rubber plantations for the London Asiatic Rubber and Produce Company and his mother was born in India, another former British colonial outpost.
Education
He was educated at Crown Woods Comprehensive School in London, and the United World College of the Pacific in British Columbia, Canada before he went to Oxford. Sands graduated with a Bachelor degree from Brasenose College at Oxford in 1984.
Career
He was the Group Chief Executive Officer of Standard Chartered plc, a position he has held from November 2006 to June 2015. Sands was taken to Malaysia as a baby and spent much of his life outside Britain, mostly in Malaysia and Singapore. He started as a trainee at United Kingdom"s Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which he left to take a Harkness Fellowship at Harvard University to earn a master’s degree in public administration from Kennedy School of Government.
McKinsey (1988–2002)
In 1988, Peter Sands started his active career life as a consultant for the management consulting firm, McKinsey in its London office.
He held positions of increasing responsibilities in the firm, and in 1996 he became a partner, and later in 2000 rose to position of a director Standard Chartered (2002–2015)
In 2002, Standard Chartered Public Limited Company, a client of McKinsey, hired Peter Sands as its Group Finance Director.
Four years later in 2006, he was chosen as its Group Chief Executive Officer. Between 2002 and 2008, the headcount of Standard Chartered nearly doubled to 70,000 and by 2009, more than 90% of its profits came from fast-growing emerging markets mainly in Asia.
Standard Chartered had weathered the economic downturn far better than most of its competitors and announced its seventh successive year of record profits in 2009.
The British bank rescue plan, which was copied around the world, was based on a blueprint devised by Peter Sands. Standard Chartered itself did not take "any taxpayer money or used any central bank liquidity schemes". In February 2015, amidst growing shareholder unrest, Sands announced that he would be stepping down as Chief Executive Officer, effective June 2015.
At the time of the announcement, the Wall Street Journal noted that Sands, having served at the helm of Standard Chartered for nine years, was among the "longest-serving chiefs of a major Western bank." On 26 February 2015, it was announced that his successor would be Bill Winters, former co-Chief Executive Officer of Justice of the Peace Morgan"s investment banking business.
They live in Highbury in north London and have a second home in Monmouthshire.
Membership
Sands is member of the Board of Directors of the Institute of International Finance, the global association of financial institutions, and chairman of their Special Committee on Effective Regulation. The British government appointed him in 2009 to the Independent Review of Higher Education Funding and Student Finance and serves as a board member of the Global Business Coalition on Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GBC)
He is also a member of the British Good Work Commission, which is tasked to examine the major challenges of work in the 21st century and redefine the notion of good work – work that is rewarding for business, society and individuals.