Emeritus Professor Brian Scott-Quinn

Earlier in his career he worked in asset management, corporate lending, investment banking, and debt capital markets prior to founding the ICMA Centre in 1991 as a new type of specialist university finance school.

Through his contacts in the industry, he arranged for the International Capital Markets Association (ICMA) which is the Zurich-based trade association for some 400 banks and asset managers (www.icmagroup.org) to provide gifts of £8m in total to fund two new buildings on the Reading campus, to house the Centre.

As well as being the founder of, and raising all the funding for, the ICMA Centre, he has been a founding director of three companies:

Along with three others in the late 1970s he became a founding director and shareholder of Ross & Partners Securities Ltd – a privately owned eurobond trading house. After negotiating the sale of Ross & Partners to the large US investment bank, Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. he became finance director of Drexel Burnham Lambert Securities Ltd., responsible for funding and risk management.

In 2010 he was invited to become an NED of Madiston Plc, a fintech software house which produces white label digital banking and online direct lending software. The company is also working on introducing cryptocurrencies, smart contracts and blockchain into the platform. He remains a director.

In 2014 he became a founding director of Civilised Bank Plc, a small and medium sized enterprise (SME), lending bank. He was also Chairman of the Audit and Assurance Committee and is approved by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) under their Senior Managers and Certification Regime to be a director of a UK bank. Civilised now has a banking license and is in the mobilisation stage prior to commencing customer business. He remained a director until May 2018 when he stepped down from the board.

He is also a Member of the Advisory Board (financing advisor) of Penultimate Power Ltd, a UK company working with potential partners on High Temperature, Gas/ Molten Salt cooled, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMRs) for generation of electricity, process heat, desalination and hydrogen production. Penultimate’s aim is to facilitate the establishment of a UK capacity to manufacture such reactors in the UK and to deploy them in the UK and in export markets.

He is a founding board member of Henley Business Angels Ltd, owned by the University of Reading and sponsored by Barclays Bank and PwC which brings together C-suite directors of major companies as mentors, investors and entrepreneurs.

He is an invited member of the European Union (EU) High Level Expert Group on Sustainable Finance. The aim of the Group is to ensure that through moral suasion, self-interest and regulation, financiers will take climate change risk into consideration when making investment and lending decisions and thus reduce lending to and investment in, companies with a low ESG score and increase lending and investment in high ESG score companies.

In 1986 he moved from Drexel Burnham to a full-time post in Security Pacific Hoare Govett – a US owned financial conglomerate combining commercial and investment banking and stockbroking. Initially working in debt & equity portfolio advisory he subsequently became strategy advisor to the Group CEO. He returned to the University in 1990 before setting up the ICMA Centre.

His earlier consultancies include:

Westpac Bank:(setting up an investment banking arm),

NM Rothschild: (setting up a new trading division),

Canada Life Insurance: (advising on their proposed investments in structured assets [CDOs]),

Australian Mutual Provident (AMP): (advising on the structuring of a new UK asset management arm to service 3^rd party customers),

Shuaa Capital: Dubai (setting up new IT systems for asset management, equity IPOs and trading),

London Stock Exchange: (advisor to in-house team on new technology)

SWX Europe :(Member, Market Advisory Panel of Tradepoint)

Dubai Stock Exchange and DIFX: (strategy advisor to board member Dr Osama El Ansari)

Bahamian Ministry of Finance (Consultant on establishing a capital market)

Capital Market Authority (CMA): Saudi Arabia (capital market and regulatory training)

He was a member of the Financial Services Authority (FSA) industry working group on Secondary Bond Market Transparency.

In 1978/79 he worked as the monetary policy advisor to Margaret Thatcher’s first Chancellor of the Exchequer Lord Howe of Aberavon (Geoffrey Howe).

In 2014 he was an expert witness for an Icelandic legal firm (Logos) relating to bond buybacks by Icelandic banks near to the time of insolvency.

In 2016, he worked as an advisor to the new CFO and, subsequently, with a new (external) board member of Rabobank on capital structure issues consequent on the coming into force of the Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (BRRD) and the new TLAC rules (impact on senior bond-holders of the new regulatory framework).

He is the co-author (with research assistant, Deyber Cano) of “Financing the Energy Transition – the role of banks and financial markets in mitigating climate change: how investor self-interest, fiduciary duty, regulation, consumer activism, ESG disclosure and Generation IV nuclear can slow global warming” which is the final chapter in Risk and Energy Infrastructure Vol II - published by Globe Law and Business Publishers, in November 2017

He is the co-author (with Deyber Cano) of a commissioned study for two trade associations - the Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME) and ICMA: “Guide to Infrastructure Financing” – published in July 2015 as a guide for procurement agencies and sponsors considering a new project.

In 2013 his paper (co-authored with Deyber Cano) entitled ‘Role of the Buy-side in Pricing and Liquidity Provision in European Corporate Bond Trading’ was published by the trade association, ICMA.

Published Books

Commercial and Investment Banking and the International Credit and Capital Markets: a guide to the global finance industry and its governance. Macmillan 2014

Investment Banking: theory and practice. Macmillan 1991

Britain’s Money Puzzle: are we on target for economic stability. Bow Group 1977

The Eurodollar System: practice and theory of international interest rates. Macmillan 1977 (with Paul Einzig)

The New Euromarkets: a theoretical and practical study of international financing in the eurobond, eurocurrency and related financial markets, Macmillan 1975