A slow and at times erratic jog away from the City has taken Edmond Warner, former star strategist at Dresdner Kleinwort before he became a proper investment banker, all the way to UK Athletics.
Warner has been named as chairman of Britain’s national governing body for athletics in the lead up to London’s hosting of the Olympic games in 2012. It’s a newly-created non-executive position, working with a new chief executive who has yet to be named following the resignation of David Moorcroft.
Aside from a claim to knowing a bit about how boardrooms operate, Warner’s suitability for the job seems to have been sealed by his active membership of the Fittleworth Flyers, a local running club based in West Sussex. He’s got seven marathons under his belt.
“None of my achievements in our sport allows me to stand shoulder to shoulder with Britain’s leading athletes, but I believe that they give me some insight into their motivations and the commitment necessary for them to achieve excellence in their chosen fields,” he said in a statement.
Warner is best known in the City for jumping to the top of the Extel analysts ratings in the early 1990s before going on to help sell NatWest Securities first to Bankers Trust and then to Deutsche Bank. He left to head up Midlands broker Albert E Sharpe before this, in turn, was consumed by Old Mutual. More recently he led the turnaround of IFX, the spreadbetting company that was recently acquired by City Index.
Along the way Warner has been a regular media pundit on financial matters, writing columns for the Guardian and the Telegraph and appearing regularly on the BBC’s Today programme.