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The Queen has been pleased to appoint Iona Sara McDonald , MA, LLB, DL, as Lord-Lieutenant for Ayrshire and Arran to succeed Mr John Duncan, CVO, QPM, who retired on 15 October 2017.

Background

Mrs McDonald was educated at Cumnock Academy and she graduated from Glasgow University with a Master of Arts in 1976 and Law degree in 1978. She subsequently joined the Ayr firm Mathie-Morton, Black and Buchanan and became a partner in 1982. She was appointed as a temporary Sheriff in 1994 and received a full appointment in 2000 to the Sheriffdom of North Strathclyde, sitting in Paisley and Kilmarnock Sheriff courts. Since 2007 she has been Senior Sheriff at Kilmarnock.

During her distinguished career Sheriff McDonald has held a number of other positions. She has acted as a court reporter in family cases and as a safeguarder in children’s hearings. She has been a facilitator for judicial studies training and a mentor to newly appointed Sheriffs. In 2010 she was appointed a member of the Scottish Courts Service Board where she is chair of the Estates Committee. She was also involved in the training of Justices of the Peace and Children’s Panel members. Sheriff Iona McDonald is involved in charity fundraising, in particular for the British Heart Foundation.

• Professor Jennifer Rubin appointed as ESRC Chief Executive and will become Executive Chair once UKRI is operational in 2018
• Sir Harpal Kumar becomes UKRI Innovation Champion
• UKRI will play a key role in helping the UK strengthen its competitiveness as part of the new Industrial Strategy

Science Minister, Jo Johnson, has today (Thursday 26 October) announced that Professor Jennifer Rubin has been appointed Chief Executive and Executive Chair Designate of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Sir Harpal Kumar has also been chosen as the Innovation Champion of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

Professor Rubin will continue as Chief Executive until the end of March 2018 and, upon the creation of UKRI on 1 April, will become ESRC’s Executive Chair.

Executive Chairs will be crucial to delivering UKRI’s mission to maintain the UK’s global leadership in research and innovation. They will lead each of the 9 councils that will be part of UKRI, and the role will combine the responsibilities of the current Chair and Chief Executive of each council.

Sir Harpal’s appointment as the UKRI Innovation Champion is in addition to his role on the UKRI Board. As Innovation Champion he will promote innovation and business interests within UKRI and will sit on the Innovate UK Council.

Announcing these appointments, Science Minister Jo Johnson said:

UKRI’s Executive Chairs will play a vital role in our Industrial Strategy by strengthening the UK’s global research competitiveness, and Professor Rubin’s wealth of experience ensures that she is well positioned to lead one of our councils through this transition.

Along with Sir Harpal being made Innovation Champion, these appointments are key to ensuring UKRI is truly interdisciplinary, representing a broad range of research interests. while aligning our research and development sector more closely with business.

Sir Mark Walport, UKRI Chief Executive Designate said:

Professor Jennifer Rubin has a first class academic background in social science and public policy and is ideally placed to lead ESRC to support and champion economic and social sciences within UKRI. Sir Harpal Kumar will bring great experience from his time in business and his distinguished leadership of Cancer Research UK to ensure that the voice of innovation is at the heart of UKRI.

Professor Jennifer Rubin said:

Rigorous social science can be transformative. When brought to bear on pressing challenges from antimicrobial resistance to low productivity, excellent research can make a contribution to improving outcomes for people, communities and economies. I feel privileged to be asked to lead the ESRC in supporting and developing world-leading social science, as well as the skills and data to understand and address societal issues together with colleagues under the new umbrella of UKRI.

Notes for Editors

1. The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is the UK’s largest funder of research on the social and economic questions facing us today. It supports the development and training of the UK’s future social scientists and also funds major studies that provide the infrastructure for research. ESRC-funded research informs policymakers and practitioners and helps make businesses, voluntary bodies and other organisations more effective. The ESRC also works collaboratively with six other UK research councils and Innovate UK to fund cross-disciplinary research and innovation addressing major societal challenges. The ESRC is an independent organisation, established by Royal Charter in 1965, and funded mainly by the government.
2. Executive Chairs will be crucial to the ambition for UKRI to be a world-leading research and innovation organisation. Each of the 9 Councils that will be part of UKRI will be led by an Executive Chair, a role combining the responsibilities of the current Chair and Chief Executive of each Council.
3. Operating across the whole of the UK and with a combined budget of more than £6 billion, UKRI will bring together the seven Research Councils, Innovate UK and a new organisation, Research England. UKRI will ensure that the UK maintains its world leadership in research and innovation, by creating the best environment for research and innovation to flourish. It will come into existence on 1 April 2018.
4. Professor Jennifer Rubin is currently Director of the Policy Institute at King’s and Professor of Public Policy. Before joining King’s Jennifer established and then led the justice and home affairs research programme at RAND Europe for 10 years. She has served on RAND’s executive team most recently as Executive Vice President, helping to lead its quadrupling in size in Europe. Jennifer obtained her PhD at the University of Cambridge in social and political sciences (King’s College), following a first class degree in European Politics at Loughborough University. She has lectured in politics and psychology; published numerous peer-reviewed policy research reports and academic journal articles; and been a visiting fellow at Harvard’s Center for European Studies.
5. Sir Harpal has been Chief Executive of Cancer Research UK since 2007, having been Chief Operating Officer from 2004 to 2007 and Chief Executive of Cancer Research Technology (CRT) from 2002 to 2004. He joined CRT from Nexan Group, a venture capital-backed medical device company which Sir Harpal led as Chief Executive, having stepped down as Chief Executive of the Papworth Trust to found the business. His early career included a period working as a research scientist with the UK Atomic Energy Authority. Sir Harpal was Chair of the Taskforce and author of “Achieving World-Class Cancer Outcomes: A Strategy for England 2015 to 2020”, published in summer 2015. He is a Trustee of The Francis Crick Institute, a member of the National Cancer Transformation Board and chairs the National Cancer Advisory Group. He is also a member of the Life Sciences Industrial Strategy Advisory Board, and of the Mayor of London’s Brexit Advisory Group.

The proposals include opening up Guild-run fairs for non-member showmen and reducing restrictions on rival fairs opening close to Guild fairs. They also include practical steps to improve transparency, including publishing the Guild rules online, and ensuring objective criteria for membership are explicitly set out.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) investigation has therefore been closed, pending the result of a vote of Guild members to confirm the changes.

The changes aim to:

• Give fairgoers more choice and variety in their local area.
• Improve the quality of rides and fairgoers’ all-round experience.
• Give local councils more power to decide who runs fairs in their area. This will allow them to change the make up of and refresh under-performing fairs.
• Help members and non-members of the Guild work together more easily, providing more choice and fresh attractions to fairgoers.

Ann Pope, CMA Senior Director of Antitrust, said:

The rule changes offered by the Showmen’s Guild will provide the opportunity for millions of UK fairgoers to have more choice in the range of fairs coming to their local area, as well as give showmen the chance to expand their businesses and improve their fairs.

These rule changes are not about favouring larger fairground businesses over smaller ones or depriving any showmen of their livelihood.

Instead, the aim is to make the all-round experience even better for the benefit of fairgoers and showmen alike.

We are pleased the Guild has responded positively to the competition concerns our investigation raised by offering changes to address them.

The members now have the chance to vote in favour of these rule changes to address our competition concerns and draw a line under the CMA’s investigation.

The changes have been suggested in response to the CMA’s allegation in December 2016 that the Guild’s current rules broke the law by limiting competition at fairs run by the Guild and between existing Guild fairs and rival fairs.

Following a public consultation the CMA considers that the commitments offered by the Guild address its competition concerns and has today formally accepted them.

Guild members will vote in January 2018 on whether to accept the proposed changes. If the rule changes are not accepted, the CMA could re-open the investigation.

Notes to editors

1. The CMA is the UK’s primary competition and consumer authority. It is an independent non-ministerial government department with responsibility for carrying out investigations into mergers, markets and the regulated industries and enforcing competition and consumer law. For CMA updates, follow us on Twitter @CMAgovuk, Facebook, Flickr and LinkedIn. Sign up to our email alerts to receive updates on Competition Act 1998 cases.
2. The Chapter I prohibition in the Competition Act 1998 (the Act) prohibits anti-competitive agreements and concerted practices between undertakings (for example, businesses) and decisions by associations of undertakings which may affect trade within the UK or a part of it and which have as their object or effect the prevention, restriction or distortion of competition within the UK or a part of it, unless they are excluded or exempt in accordance with the Act.
3. In December 2015, the CMA launched a formal investigation in respect of certain rules of the Guild, having established that there were reasonable grounds for suspecting that the Chapter I prohibition had been infringed. In December 2016, the CMA issued a Statement of Objections to the Guild, setting out its provisional view that certain of the Guild’s rules infringed the Chapter I prohibition.
4. Where the CMA has begun an investigation under the Act but has not made an infringement decision, it may accept commitments to take such action (or to refrain from taking such action) as it considers appropriate for the purposes of addressing the competition concerns it has identified. If the CMA proposes to accept the commitments offered, the CMA must consult those who are likely to be affected by them, giving them an opportunity to give the CMA their views. The CMA must then take any such views into account before making a final decision on whether to accept the commitments. Formal acceptance of commitments results in the CMA terminating its investigation and not proceeding to an infringement decision.
5. The decision by the CMA to accept commitments does not amount to or imply any finding as to the legality or otherwise of the conduct by the parties under investigation either prior to acceptance of the commitments or once the commitments are in place.
6. The Showmen’s Guild of Great Britain describes its purpose as being “to protect the interests of its members – travelling showmen who gain their livelihoods by attending funfairs”.
7. The Guild has stated that “Virtually all travelling Funfairs – some 200 per week between Easter and Bonfire night – are operated by members of the Showmen’s Guild”. Some fairs in the UK attract over half a million fairgoers. It is estimated that the Guild has around 2,000 members that are active in putting on fairs.
8. The Guild’s commitments have been offered by those members representing the Guild (having taken soundings of the wider membership of the Guild) on the basis that the Guild’s membership will now be asked to implement them by a vote at the annual general meeting of the Guild’s Central Council to take place no later than 31 January 2018. In the event that the membership of the Guild fails to vote in favour of the rule changes proposed under the commitments and therefore to implement the Guild’s proposed commitments by 31 January 2018, then the CMA reserves the right to re-open its investigation.
9. Any businesses or individuals that have concerns about compliance with the commitments can contact the CMA by email (general.enquiries@cma.gsi.gov.uk) or by phone (020 3738 6000).
10. Media enquiries to the CMA should be directed to press@cma.gsi.gov.uk or 020 3738 6798.

UK Government Investments (“UKGI”), the Government’s centre of expertise in corporate finance and corporate governance, announces a significant strengthening of its senior management team with the appointment of four new Directors. Tom Cooper and Candida Morley join UKGI as Directors, while Michael Harrison and Henry Lloyd have both been promoted to Director from within UKGI. These appointments expand UKGI’s senior management team from four to eight Directors working with Mark Russell, UKGI’s Chief Executive Officer.

Commenting, Mark Russell said:

As UKGI activity continues to increase, I am delighted that we have been able to strengthen further and enlarge our senior management team through the appointment of four highly experienced Directors.

One of the primary attractions of working at UKGI is that we operate at the heart of government, at the point where the public and private sectors meet. As such, we welcome Tom and Candida to UKGI from the private sector and congratulate Michael and Henry on their appointments as UKGI Directors. They all bring a breadth and depth of expertise to the senior management team which will be hugely beneficial to the ongoing development of UKGI.

Tom Cooper was most recently Global Co-Chairman of M&A at Deutsche Bank where he has spent the last 8 years. He started his career at KMPG and was at UBS Investment Bank for 21 years where his various roles included Head of European M&A.

Candida Morley joins UKGI from HgCapital where she was an Operating Partner. Between 2001 – 2015 she worked at private equity fund LDC (where her roles included Chief Portfolio Offer and Chief Operating Officer), prior to which she worked at Elementis plc, 3i plc and as Director of Development at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Michael Harrison joined UKGI in 2009 from Greenhill Caliburn, the Australian independent corporate finance adviser, prior to which he worked at CSFB and BZW. At UKGI he has worked on a range of projects across Government and currently works closely with organisations including Network Rail and Ordnance Survey.

Henry Lloyd joined UKGI in 2015 having spent over 25 years in European corporate finance and M+A, including roles at JPMorgan, CSFB and BZW. At UKGI his work has included representing the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on the board of The Insolvency Service and advising the Ministry of Defence on the establishment of a new Executive Agency for the delivery of the submarine programme.

For further information:

UKGI: Josh Coe – 0207 215 4787

Citigate Dewe Rogerson: Toby Moore, Jos Bieneman, Elizabeth Kittle – 0207 638 9571

About UK Government Investments (‘UKGI’)

UKGI is owned by HM Treasury but independently managed and with a Board mostly comprised of independent Non Executive Directors. It combines the former Shareholder Executive and UK Financial Investments (‘UKFI’). Working with a range of Government departments across Whitehall and operating at the boundary of the public and private sectors, UKGI’s role is to provide Government with a centre of excellence in corporate finance and corporate governance.
While enormous in its scope and diversity, UKGI’s work covers four principal areas:

• It acts as shareholder, representing Government’s interests in the stewardship of over twenty arms-length organisations and assets, ensuring their good governance, scrutinising their performance and looking to optimise their value and operational efficiency on behalf of the taxpayer. It does all of this in line with its Principles of Portfolio Governance, which set the standard for the governance of assets in the public sector;
• It continuously reviews the feasibility of and alternatives for optimising the monetisation of those Government assets held for disposal, going on to prepare and execute all of Government’s significant corporate and financial asset sales;
• It advises Government on all its financial interventions into corporate structures resulting from corporate or sectoral distress and other special situations;
• It advises Government on its major negotiations with corporates, responding to M&A and other potential transactions that have implications for the UK national interest.