Who is Richard Sharp?
Richard Simon Sharp, who was born in Britain on February 8, 1956, used to be a banker. Since February 2021, he has been in charge of the BBC. After the Heppinstall investigation into the hiring process came out with its results, Sharp gave his resignation to the BBC Board and the Culture Secretary. His departure will take place at the end of June 2023.
Sharp worked for JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs. From 2007 to 2012, he was head of the Royal Academy of Arts, and from 2013 to 2019, he was on the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee.
Sharp was in charge of Rishi Sunak at Goldman Sachs before he became Prime Minister. People said that his friendship with Sunak would likely help him lead talks with the government about the future of the BBC’s license fee.
Sharp has given the Conservative Party more than £400,000 in money. He helped Boris Johnson get an £800,000 loan while he was Prime Minister. This led to an investigation and his retirement.
Richard Sharp’s pay as head of the BBC
Sharp gets paid £160,000 per year.
Forbes Net Worth of Richard Sharp
Sharp has an estimated net worth of $78 Million dollars as of 2023, he is the chairperson of BBC and a former banker
Career
Sharp spent eight years working for JP Morgan.After that, he worked for Goldman Sachs for 23 years, eventually becoming chairman of its main trading business in Europe.
He left in 2007. He was Rishi Sunak’s boss at Goldman Sachs, an assistant to Boris Johnson when he was Mayor of London, and Sunak’s unpaid adviser on the UK’s economic response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
From 2013 to 2019, he was on the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee. In 2014, he joined RoundShield Partners, a business that invests in real estate.
He was a senior member of the company until February 2021, when The Guardian asked the company for comment. RoundShield advised and managed a fund that gave a £50m loan to Caridon Property, which has been accused of “cramming homeless and low-income families into former office blocks”.
From 2007 to 2012, Sharp was the head of the Royal Academy of Arts.
CEO of the BBC
In January 2021, it was reported that he would be the next chairman of the BBC. He would take over for David Clementi, who was leaving the job the next month. Sharp told the Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport Committee soon after he was hired that he meant to give his £160,000 salary from the BBC to charity.
Donations to conservatives and political trouble
The Guardian said that Sharp had given more than £400,000 to the Conservative Party and was a past director of the Centre for Policy Studies, a think tank started by Margaret Thatcher in the 1970s that has ties to the Conservative Party.
Tim Davie, a former Conservative Party candidate for council, had been named Director-General a few weeks before. In January 2023, Professor Diane Coyle, who used to work for the BBC Trust, said that Sharp shouldn’t have been on the panel at all.
The Sunday Times said in January 2023 that Sharp helped Boris Johnson, who was Prime Minister at the time, get a loan for £800,000. This was just a few weeks before Sharp was named head of the BBC.
Sharp put Johnson in touch with Sam Blyth, a Canadian investor and a distant cousin of Johnson’s who was worth a lot of money and agreed to be a guarantor.
Sharp didn’t say that he had anything to do with Johnson’s finances during the interview or at a hearing in front of a select committee. He admitted that he “connected” Johnson and Blyth but denied that this was a conflict of interest. Sky News asked Johnson about this, and he said that Sharp didn’t know anything about his funds.
After the story came out, the Labour Party asked for a review into Sharp’s appointment as chair of the BBC and suggested that the Prime Minister had broken the code of conduct.
The claims have been denied by the Cabinet Office through a spokesperson, and government members have said that Sharp was hired because of his skills. The BBC’s Board is looking into possible conflicts of interest, but Sharp has said he will not leave his job.
In an article for The Guardian on January 24, 2023, Roger Bolton made comparisons to the controversy over the appointment of Gavyn Davies as head of the BBC by the Labour government of Tony Blair in 2001.
Bolton said that he was a member of the Labour Party and gave money to it. He was also “a multimillionaire” and “a former partner at Goldman Sachs.” His wife was a “private secretary to the prime minister,” Bolton said.
Bolton also said that Greg Dyke, who was the director general before Davies, was a Labour Party member and supporter. Roger Mosey said that to restore faith in the BBC’s impartiality, political appointments to the chairmanship should stop. Mosey said, “All governments have done it.”
Sharp didn’t tell the Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport Committee about the meetings he had. This was discussed at a meeting on February 7, 2023.
The Committee decided that this omission kept proper investigation from happening. The committee of people from different parties said that Sharp didn’t give them “the full facts we needed to make an informed decision about his suitability as a candidate.” Mr. Sharp should think about how his omissions will affect people’s trust in him, the BBC, and the process of making public decisions.
Lucy Powell, a Labour MP, thought that the report called into question the impartiality and independence of the BBC and criticized “cronyism.” Daisy Cooper, a Liberal Democrat MP, asked the ministerial ethics expert to look into Johnson.
Jonathan Dimbleby, a TV host, said that Sharp should “fall on his sword” because he had been criticized. He also said that the trouble was doing “a lot of damage to the BBC.”
Patience Wheatcroft, a journalist, said that Sharp did Johnson a favor by helping him get a loan when Johnson wanted the prime minister to give him the top job at the BBC.(…) The BBC needs a leader with perfect judgment.”
Richard Norton-Taylor, a former military reporter for the Guardian, wrote in Declassified UK, “The Sharp affair is just the latest example of the close relationship between the BBC and the top of the British establishment.”
In further evidence to the Select Committee, in March 2023, John Birt described Sharp as being unsuitable for the job and blamed the Cabinet Secretary for a lack of governance in the appointment.
