The Lord Pitt-Watson | |
|---|---|
| Member of the House of Lords | |
| Life peerage 15 January 2026 | |
| Personal details | |
| Party | Labour |
David James Pitt-Watson, Baron Pitt-Watson is a Scottish business and social entrepreneur and author. He is a Fellow atCambridge Judge Business School, and has been active in various initiatives to promote responsible investment. He chairs the CDC Forum, a community interest company, nurtured by theRoyal Society of Arts. He was nominated to the House of Lords in December 2025.
Born in 1956 inAberdeen,Scotland, he is the son ofIan Pitt-Watson, aminister of the Church of Scotland, and Helen Pitt-Watson.[1] He has two sisters. His grandfather wasJames Pitt-Watson,Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1953.[2]
Pitt-Watson was educated atBearsden Academy andAberdeen Grammar School and then atQueen's College, Oxford where he studiedPolitics, Philosophy and Economics. He went on to win a scholarship from theRotary Foundation toStanford UniversityGraduate School of Business, where he graduated with anMA andMBA in 1980.[1]
After short periods of work at3i andMcKinsey Pitt-Watson helped establish and was ultimately managing director of Braxton Associates Limited. He worked there for 17 years during which time it was bought byDeloitte and becameDeloitte Consulting. Pitt-Watson was a partner at Deloitte for 12 years advising company boards and international agencies on strategy and competitiveness.
He left that position in 1997 to become Assistant General Secretary of theLabour Party,[3] a post he held for two years before joining Hermes Fund Managers (nowFederated Hermes) as commercial director of their newly formedshareholder activist funds.
These funds, known as the Focus Funds, grew to be the largest of their kind in Europe. Pitt-Watson became head of the funds and a director of Hermes in 2004, where he founded itsEquity Ownership Service, a service to pension funds which aims to ensure that shares they own are used to promote good management practice and sustainable investment. By 2025 HEOS advised on over $2,000bn worth of assets.[4] Hermes interventions have led to the successful turnaround of some of the country's largest companies.[5]
After leaving Hermes, Pitt-Watson served numerous commercial roles, including as an independent non-executive at KPMG and as an advisor to Aviva Investors and Sarasin & Partners LLP.
For many years he has advised policy makers of all parties, includingTony Blair andGordon Brown, on issues of industrial and financial policy, corporate governance and financial market regulation.[3] He was a member of the cross-party Future of Banking Commission,[6] chaired byDavid Davis, and the Sharman Commission[7] relating to the use of theGoing Concern rules.
Pitt-Watson co-authoredWhat They Do With Your Money with Stephen Davis and Jon Lukomnik, published by Yale University Press in 2016. It describes how the financial system, whose services are essential to the economy, has become dysfunctional, and how this problem can be addressed.[8]
With Davis and Lukomnik, he also wroteThe New Capitalists, which describes how structures of corporate governance can help ensure companies work in the interest of the millions of individuals who own their shares. It was published in November 2006 by Harvard Business School Press and translated into five languages.[9] He also co-authored with Carol Scott Leonard, Privatisation and Transition in Russia in the Early 1990s,[10] based on his experience as a strategic adviser to the World Bank.
Pitt-Watson is the author ofThe Hermes Principles, which lays out the expectations of Hermes of the companies in which it invests, and forms the rationale for Hermes interventions in under performing companies.[11]
Together with these publications, Pitt-Watson has written numerous papers and articles, and has been a regular contributor to British newspapers.
Pitt-Watson chaired theUN Environment Programme's Finance Initiative, in the run up to the 2015United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris. He was a trustee and treasurer of Oxfam GB from 2011– 2017, where he had been closely involved in helping to establish its Enterprise Development Programme. Pitt-Watson was a trustee ofNesta, the innovation charity where he chaired its £400million endowment and of theInstitute for Public Policy Research.[12]
At theRoyal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce (The RSA)[13] he established the Tomorrow's Investor programme which was influential in raising the debate and achieving a consensus for reform to improve the structures, costs and transparency of pensions in Britain, most particularly in promoting pensions which give an income-for-life.
In February 2000 he helped initiate and served on theCo-operative Commission which aimed to help revive the fortunes of the UK Co-operative movement.[14]
Pitt-Watson was also a councillor onWestminster City Council, for theMaida Vale ward, from 1986 to 1990.[15] In December 2025, as part of the2025 Political Peerages, Pitt-Watson was nominated for alife peerage to sit in theHouse of Lords as aLabour peer; he was created asLord Pitt-Watson[16], of Kirkland of Glencairn in the County of Dumfriesshire on 15 January 2025.[17][18]
In addition to his Fellowship at Cambridge, Pitt-Watson held the Pembroke Visiting Professorship in 2018. He was Executive Fellow atLondon Business School from 2012 to 2017 and Visiting Professor of Strategic Management atCranfield University School of Management from 1990 to 1996.[19][20]
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