Bim Afolami: Meet the new City minister and ex-Freshfields and HSBC man
Bim Afolami was appointed City minister late on Monday night as Rishi Sunak’s reshuffle gathered pace.
Andrew Griffith, his predecessor, did his best to smile through the Lord Mayor’s Banquet just hours after being informed he was being moved – with many coming up to him to congratulate him on a job well done.
So who is Bim Afolami – and what’s on his plate?
A former City man
Born in Berkshire and educated at Eton and Oxford, Afolami headed for the City after university.
He worked for Freshfield Bruckhaus Derringer as a corporate lawyer before moving to HSBC as a Senior Executive (Vice President) within restructuring and strategy.
He was duly elected in 2017 as the MP for Hitchin and Harpenden, and re-elected in 2019.
Afolami hasn’t let his finance past lie in parliament, serving as chair of the all party parliamentary group on finance and markets.
Priorities
Afolami will inherit the work of his predecessor on market reforms, of which much is ongoing.
But he is also likely to be a firmer voice for smarter regulation.
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He founded the regulatory reform group in 2022, a grouping of Tory MPs keen for a bigger rethink of our post-Brexit regulations across the economy.
“Britain’s departure from the European Union has created a unique opportunity to re-shape our regulatory framework for financial services,” he wrote for Morning Wire in 2021, “setting the sector up for continued success in the years to come and maintaining the UK’s position as a globally competitive financial centre.”
One other thing is clear: he is not a man who believes in leaving the regulators alone.
There has been some low-level grumbling in recent years from watchdogs about new duties placed upon them to consider competitiveness in their actions.
Afolami appears supportive.
“We must now take a path not of deregulation but re-regulation, through a system guided by transparency and accountability, and where improving outcomes is not an afterthought,” he wrote in another piece for Morning Wire earlier this year.
“Our regulators, many of whom are getting more powers, need to be held much more accountable and their performance measured against clearly articulated objectives,” he continued.
His first priority will of course be the Autumn Statement, due later this month, Whilst much of the content will already be in train, he along with other new Treasury colleagues including the high-flying Laura Trott will be expected to front up many of the week’s announcements.