John Browne, Baron Browne of Madingley

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John Browne, Baron Browne of Madingley bigraphy, stories - Presidents

John Browne, Baron Browne of Madingley : biography

20 February 1948 –

Edmund John Philip Browne, Baron Browne of Madingley, FRS, FREng (born 20 February 1948) is President of the Royal Academy of Engineering and was group Chief Executive of BP until his resignation on 1 May 2007. Since 2001, he has been a crossbench member of the House of Lords.

The Browne Review

On 12 October 2010 the report of the inquiry headed by Lord Browne was published under the title Securing a Sustainable Future for Higher Education. The main recommendation of the report was that the current cap of £3,290 on university tuition fees should be lifted thereby allowing such institutions to determine their own fee structure.

Current activities

Browne is currently Managing Director and Managing Partner (Europe) of Riverstone Holdings LLC, also the chairman of Britain’s only shale gas driller Cuadrilla Resources.

He became President of the Royal Academy of Engineering in July 2006. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2006. In 1998, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and in 2001 named by the House of Lords Appointments Commission as one of the "people’s peers" taking the title Baron Browne of Madingley, of Cambridge in the County of Cambridgeshire, House of Lords, UK Parliament, 18 July 2001 and becoming a crossbencher in the House of Lords. In 2000 he was the recipient of the FIRST Responsible Capitalism Award. He was appointed a Trustee of the Tate Gallery on 1 August 2007 and Chair of the Trustees in January 2009. In November 2009 it was announced that Lord Browne would chair an independent review into university tuition fees which reported in October 2010. In December 2009 the Review panel revealed that the average graduate premium in the UK, the increase in lifetime salary of a degree compared to 2 A levels, had fallen to just £100,000 (before debt). In June 2010 he was appointed as the Government’s Lead Non-Executive Director, charged with recruiting business leaders to reformed departmental boards.

In October 2010 it was announced that Lord Browne had been appointed chairman of the advisory board at Stanhope Capital as the asset manager gears up for international expansion. The former chief executive of BP will help advise on attracting investment from charities and endowment trusts, which at present make up a small number of the Stanhope’s total clients

In June 2013, it was reported that Lord Browne had agreed to advise Russia’s Alfa Group on a new $20bn (£12.7bn) global oil and gas fund.

Personal life

Lord Browne lists 17th- and 18th-century illustrated Italian books, pre-Columbian art, contemporary Art, music, opera and the theatre among his interests.

He is a Fellow and President of The Royal Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, a Fellow of the Institute of Petroleum, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, a Companion of the Institute of Management, an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, an Honorary Fellow of the Geological Society, an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Browne been awarded Honorary Doctorates from Heriot-Watt University (D.Eng) and Robert Gordon University (D.Tech), Aston University in Birmingham, University of Dundee (LLD), Warwick University (D.Sc), Hull University (D.Sc), Cranfield University (D.Sc), Sheffield Hallam University (Hon. D Univ), University of Buckingham (D.Sc), University of Belfast (Hon DSc 0 Eng) and the University of Surrey (Hon D. Univ), Imperial College, London (Hon D.Sc), Leuven University, Belgium (D.Sc), Thunderbird (LLD), University of Notre Dame (LLD), Colorado School of Mines (D.Eng), D Mendeleyev University of Chemical Technology of Russia, Arizona State University (DHLitt). He is an Honorary Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge and a Senior Member of St Antony’s College, Oxford.

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