Adam Ridley

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Sir Adam Nicholas Ridley (born 14 May 1942) is a British economist, civil servant, and banker.

After working at the

Special Advisor to the Chancellors of the Exchequer until 1984. He later served as a director of Hambros Bank, of Morgan Stanley, and of Equitas
insurance companies.

Early life and background

The son of Jasper Maurice Alexander Ridley (1913–1943), by his marriage to Helen Laura Cressida Bonham-Carter, a daughter of

Count Alexander Benckendorff,[1][2] Russian Ambassador to the Court of St James's between 1903 and 1917.[3]

Ridley was educated at

Philosophy, Politics, and Economics in 1965.[4]

He is a first cousin of the actress Helena Bonham Carter and a more distant cousin of the Conservative cabinet minister Nicholas Ridley and the historian Jane Ridley.[1][2]

Career

After joining the

Shadow Cabinets of Heath and Margaret Thatcher.[4]

In 1975, when Thatcher wrested the party leadership from Heath, Ridley was part of her inner circle, and in his book A View from the Wings

privatisation.[9]

Ridley's final post in the world of government was as advisor to the

merchant banking. He was a director of Hambros Bank and of Hambros PLC from 1985 to 1997, and of Sunday Newspaper Publishing PLC from 1988 to 1990, serving as chairman in 1990. He was also Chairman of the Lloyd's of London Names Advisory Committee for 1995–1996, then a member of the Council of Lloyds and of the Lloyds Regulatory Board from 1997 to 1999. After leaving Hambros, he was a non-executive director of Leopold Joseph Holdings from 1998 to 2004, of Morgan Stanley Bank International from 2006 to 2013, and of Hampden Agencies Ltd from 2007 to 2012, and then of several Equitas insurance companies from 2009 to date.[4][10]

He served on the National Lottery Charities Board from 1994 to 2000, most of that time as its Deputy chairman, and since 2003 has been a member of the Council of the British School at Athens.[4]

Private life

In 1970 Ridley married firstly his second cousin Lady Katharine Asquith, one of the daughters of Julian Asquith, 2nd Earl of Oxford and Asquith,[2] but this ended in divorce in 1976.[11] In 1981, he married secondly Margaret Anne Passmore, and they have three sons. He is a member of the Garrick Club and the Political Economy Club.[4]

Christopher Dow recalled in his memoirs that when invited to lunch at the Bank of England Ridley habitually arrived by motorcycle.[8]

Publications

  • Europe, the Challenge of Diversity (Routledge & Kegan Paul, Chatham House Papers series, 1985), with Helen Wallace[12]

Notes

  1. ^ a b Charles Mosley, ed., Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, 106th edition, vol. 1 (Crans, Switzerland: Burke's Peerage, 1999), p. 30
  2. ^ a b c L. G. Pine, The New Extinct Peerage 1884–1971: Containing Extinct, Abeyant, Dormant and Suspended Peerages with Genealogies and Arms (London: Heraldry Today, 1972), pp. 16, 276
  3. ^ 'Count Benckendorff' (obituary) in The Annual Register: a review of public events at home and abroad, for the year 1917 (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1918), pp. 153–154
  4. ^ a b c d e f g 'RIDLEY, Sir Adam (Nicholas)', in Who's Who 2014 (London: A. & C. Black, 2014)
  5. ISBN 1408831864
    ), p. 196: "In A View from the Wings, Millar recaptured the scene: a combination of the neurotic, the heroic and the comic, as he and his fellow writers Chris Patten and Adam Ridley wrote and rewrote into the small hours..."
  6. ^ David Butler, Dennis Kavanagh, The British general election of 1979 (1999), p. 154
  7. ISBN 1560001062
    ), p. 115
  8. ^ a b Christopher Dow, Inside the Bank of England: Memoirs of Christopher Dow, Chief Economist 1973–84 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p. 110
  9. ^ World Link, issues 1–4 of 1992, p. 17
  10. ^ "Adam Nicholas Ridley", cbetta.com, accessed 5 March 2023
  11. ISBN 0312046405
    ), p. 950
  12. ^ jstor reference page, accessed 21 March 2014
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