Digby Jones

• Competitiveness
• Globalisation
• Training and Development
• Leadership

In 2007 Digby Jones was appointed Minister of State for UK Trade & Investment. He did not join the party of government and without the ambition to progress in politics he concentrated on the business of promoting Britain across the world, travelling to 31 countries in 45 overseas visits.

Previously, Digby served as Director-General of the CBI, the Confederation of British Industry, the UK’s ‘Voice of Business’, from 2000 to 2006 where he regularly visited businesses in the UK and worldwide. During his appointment he took the British business message to 70 different countries, internationalising the organisation and opening CBI offices in Washington DC and Beijing.

Digby was made a Partner at Edge and Ellison, the law firm in 1984. He was responsible for developing the firm’s London presence and establishing its representation in many European countries and several states in America. He was involved in most of the major management buy-outs and merger and acquisition activity in the West Midlands in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He was made Deputy Senior Partner in 1990, becoming the Firm’s Senior Partner in 1995. In 1998 he joined KPMG as vice chairman of Corporate Finance, acting as close adviser to many public companies across the United Kingdom and in KPMG’s global markets.

Following his departure from the CBI he held a number of senior corporate advisory positions – Senior Advisor to the Executive of Deloitte; Senior Advisor to Barclays Capital; Corporate and Governmental Affairs Advisor to Ford of Europe and its Premier Automotive Group; Senior Advisor to JCB; Special Advisor to His Royal Highness the Duke of York in connection with his role as the UK Special Representative for International Trade & Investment; Senior Advisor to Computer Science Corporation inc., Member of the Advisory Board of Monitise Ltd; Member of the Advisory Board of Thales (UK) Ltd; Advisor to Hugh James, Solicitors, Cardiff and London, Advisor to Wragge & Co., Solicitors, Birmingham and London, Non-Executive Director of Alba plc, i-Clean Systems Ltd. and Leicester Tigers Rugby plc.

In 2007 he served as the UK’s Skills Envoy, campaigning for both private and public sector employers to raise the level of skills of all of their employees to Level Two by 2010.

In addition to his role as an active cross-bencher in the House of Lords he serves as Chairman of the International Business Advisory Board at HSBC, Chairman of Triumph Motorcycles Limited, and is Corporate Ambassador for Jaguar Cars and JCB.