The former City men and women among today’s peerage lineup
There are a few former City types among the 30 new peers welcomed to the House of Lords today.
Howard Leigh (Conservative): Senior partner at Cavendish. Leigh is a qualified charterd accountant who set up Deloitte’s M&A group in early 1986 and Cavendish Corporate Finance in 1988.
He’s also chaired the Conservative party’s The Leader's Group for people who have donated over £50,000. Since 2006, he has donated over £77,000 to the party through Cavendish.
Lucy Neville-Rolfe (Conservative): Former Tesco executive director of corporate and legal affairs. She started off her career in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) before moving up to private secretary to the DEFRA minister and helped negotiate the Common Agricultural Policy regime for sheep meat, milk quotas and deregulate the Milk Marketing Board.
Charles Allen (Labour): Former chief executive of ITV. Has held senior positions in Global Radio Group, Virgin Media, Goldman Sachs, Granda Group and EMI. In March 2012, he was appointed by Ed Miliband to chairman of the executive board of the Labour party.
Sir William Haughey (Labour): Chairman of City Refrigeration Holdings. Has formerly served as non-executive director for Celtic FC and donated over £5m to charity over the past five years.
Leigh isn't the only major party donor among today's peerage list.
Another notable inclusion is Sir Anthony Bamford, chairman and managing director of JCB and long-term donor to the Conservative Party. Since June 2006, he has given the party more than £2m in donations. Bamford has reportedly been in the running for a peerage before, but had to pull out.
In 2010, he told the Evening Standard he had withdrawn his name from consideration for a peerage after an objection had been made by the appointments commission over allegations surrounding his tax affairs.
He denied these allegations and had PricewaterhouseCoopers draw up a report into all his taxes over the last 15 years. He said the report found he was in fact owed some money from the taxman.
There are now 785 peers in the House.