Mervyn King has had a prolific career spanning the breadth of economic science and policymaking. Most recently, as governor of the Bank of England, he guided the British economy through the turbulence of the 2008 financial crisis.
Since retiring from the Bank of England in 2013, he has been far from idle; King spent a semester as a visiting professor at the New York University Stern School of Business and the School of Law. In July 2013, King was appointed a life peer by Queen Elizabeth. A lifelong sports fan, King now serves as a patron of the Worcestershire County Cricket Club and a director of the All England Lawn Tennis Club.
Lord King began his career teaching at the University of Cambridge and University of Birmingham. He went on to serve as a visiting professor at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He became a professor at the London School of Economics in 1984.
King began his career at the Bank of England in 1990 as a nonexecutive director. In 1991, he served as an executive director. He became the central bank’s chief economist in 1997 and its deputy governor in 1998. In 2003, King assumed his role as governor of the Bank of England and chairman of the Monetary Policy Committee before stepping down in 2013.
Lord King studied at King’s College and St. John’s College at Cambridge, and then at Harvard University as a Kennedy Scholar. He has been awarded honorary degrees from Birmingham, Cambridge, City of London, Edinburgh, London Guildhall, London School of Economics, Wolverhampton, Worcester, Helsinki, Abertay, Dundee, and Kent Universities.