Financial Services >> CEO Interviews >> September 11, 2000
BOB RIDING is Executive Chairman and is supported by a Managing Director
and four Non-Executives. A graduate of Oxford University, he spent much
of his career with the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, where he rose to be
Finance Director of Williams & Glyn's bank as it then was. On the merger
of Williams & Glyn's with the old Royal Bank to form the new Royal Bank,
he was appointed Treasurer, running the trading rooms and the dynamics
of the group balance sheet. Two years after that there was a Royal Bank
Group restructure, by which the whole group was divided into five
operating entities of various different legal constructions, and he was
appointed Chief Executive of one of those. He also represented Royal
Bank Group interests as a Non-Executive Director in various companies in
which they had shareholdings, and was also a member of various inter-
bank committees in the City of London. He retired from the Royal Bank
Group at Christmas 1990 when there was yet another restructuring and
moved offshore to live in the Isle of Man, soon being invited to join
the board at Conister Trust as a Non-Executive Director. The banking
licence rules changed not long after and the so called four-eyes concept
came into play; the board concluded that the company needed a full-time
Executive Chairman, given the new rules, and so the former Chairman, who
was a senior partner in a law firm, stood down, and Bob Riding was
appointed Executive Chairman. He is also past Chairman of the
Association of Manx Banks, and currently Chairman of the Institute of
Directors in the Isle of Man, and a member of the IOD council in London. Profile
Mr. Riding: The first thing to stress is that the Isle of Man is not
part of the United Kingdom and it has its own laws. It's never
