St James’s Place has unveiled two women who will be joining its board as it looks to shake up its image and put scandals over its sales perks and macho culture behind it.
Emma Griffin (pictured left) and Lesley-Ann Nash (pictured right) have been appointed as non-executive directors to the UK wealth manager’s board, an RNS filing on Wednesday revealed.
In addition to serving on SJP’s primary board, Griffin will also become chair of the wealth manager’s £4bn unit trust business, home to its white label funds.
Griffin holds a number of non-exec roles currently, serving on the boards of Canadian wealth manager and insurer Industrial Alliance Financial Group, which she also chairs, as well as private investment firm Claridge and Solotech.
Meanwhile, Nash is leaving behind a career in politics to join SJP. For the last six years she has worked as a director in the cabinet office where she led largescale commercial and consumer programmes.
Appointments part of SJP brand shake-up
The appointments follow closely behind the arrival of ex-Legal and General Investment Management head Helena Morrissey to SJP’s board and as the company attempts to modernise its brand.
Morrissey, who joined as a non-executive director at the start of the year, has previously indicated the wealth manager needs to do more to recruit female talent and spoken about the “bad optics” of its system of rewarding top performing advisers with luxury cruises and expensive gifts.
It was revealed this week SJP would be overhauling its perks system and had hired Landor, the brand consultant to BP and British Airways, to give its image a facelift.
SJP chairman Iain Cornish praised Griffin and Nash as valuable additions to the SJP board, pointing to their “substantial experience at a senior level across a number of sectors”.
“The new perspectives and insights they bring will undoubtedly add further value to the board and I look forward to working with them,” Cornish said.
Griffin was a founding partner of stockbroking firm Oriel Securities from 2002 to 2013 which was sold to Stifel in 2014. She started her career working at HSBC and Schroders.
Nash was a managing director at Morgan Stanley for more than a decade from 1998 until 2009 and has also worked at UBS and Midland Bank which is now part of HSBC. She is also a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants and trustee of the North London Hospice.
