Stuart Goldsmith

Doctor of Laws

18 July 2007 - Orator: Professor Eric Thomas (University Vice-Chancellor)

Madame Chancellor.

We are said to live in a Post-Modern world where the Grand Narratives of society such as religion and duty are said to be disappearing and where we simply create our own moral universe with ourselves at the centre. Others use the term atomised to describe our modern society – creating images of millions of individuals without any of the fundamental structures that have been so essential for the development of the human race – family, authority and altruism.  I disagree and always use our students to exemplify why. A group of individuals who give over 100,000 hours of community service to the people of Bristol each year are certainly not atomised. Nor, I would hazard, is the person on whom I will ask you in a few minutes to bestow an honorary degree.  On the contrary, Stuart Goldsmith displays exactly those qualities of altruism and service that are central to the human condition and are still two fundamental pillars of human society.

The Wine Society Dining Club is a serious society dedicated to combining fine food with fine wine. It is not for the faint hearted and is one of the great pleasures of our honorary graduate’s life.  He is currently Chair of that Dining Club. We must also thank the club for bringing Stuart Goldsmith back to his alma mater and thus enabling him to give so much back to this university.

 In 1990 Stuart found himself on a Dining Club tour of Alsace with 30 other people. During the subsequent week he often found himself sitting next to one Dr Derek Zutshi and it finally became clear to Stuart that Derek was the Chair of Convocation at the University of Bristol. Derek finally asked Stuart what he was doing with his life outside work and as the conversation progressed, Stuart was inexorably drawn into membership of the Convocation Committee. You can imagine how it all seemed so logical as the Rieslings, the Pinot Blancs and the Gerwurtztraminers were consumed.

But why could Stuart be tempted back to his alma mater? We need to go back to the 1940s and 50s when Stuart was a child brought up partly by his grandparents. His grand mother was highly educated and he lived in a family which he describes as “poor but respectable” and one in which education was highly valued. He describes himself as having a “reverence” for education which was increased by his time at Ashford Grammar School which only had 240 pupils and an inspirational head teacher, Mr Edwin Mortimore, who was affectionately known as Sid because he had been at Sidney Sussex College at Cambridge.  Stuart was bound for Cambridge to read Physics but he wanted to do a new subject, something different, and Economics caught his eye. Mr Mortimer advised that he should come to Bristol to read Economics because they approached it in a proper mathematical way.

So in 1963 Stuart arrived in Bristol to spend three years which he describes as his “salad days”. The true Shakespearean meaning of salad days from Anthony and Cleopatra was “a period of youthful inexperience or indiscretion”. The more modern interpretation is of it being someone’s heyday. Personally I like a little of the youthful sense of it and I’m sure that’s how Stuart sees it, although I’m sure there were no indiscretions or certainly none that Stuart has seen fit to bring to our attention. He was Treasurer of the Rag whilst he was here and was part of organising a Rag procession of over 100 floats. They collected over £8000 in coins from the street collection. There are now websites which will calculate the value of money in today’s terms for years all the way back to 1830. £8000 in 1964 is worth £109,000 if you use the retail price index and nearly a quarter of a million pounds if you use average earnings. Whatever the value it is an astonishing amount and they had to use the Rugby Club to guard the coins which weighed so much that they broke the springs of the Dormobile that was used to carry them to the bank.

This facility with money meant that the City was a natural place for young Goldsmith to adventure to. However in those days getting into the City was definitely a matter of whom you knew rather than what you knew and Stuart knew nobody.

The University of Bristol was to deliver one more opportunity to Stuart.  It was during an interview in the Careers Department here that Stuart was given the reality about going into the City and realised that he knew nobody.  As he left the interview, rather dejected, the secretary to the Department said she had heard the advice given to him and, if he wished, she could arrange an introduction to her stockbrokers, Joseph Sebag & Co.. The introduction came to pass, Stuart was interviewed and employed.  Isn’t it fascinating how the whole trajectory and narrative of your life can turn on such single events?

Success then followed success. Stuart started as an investment analyst but by the age of 32 he was Chief Executive of a small quoted company, which he built to become the fund management division of Britannia Arrow Holdings with over 400 employees with subsidiaries in London, Jersey, Boston and Denver. He was Director of 10 offshore investment companies and 12 US investment companies. He had over £4 billion under management and yes, I have been to the website again – that equals between £8 and £12 billion, depending which variable you chose.  A career as one of the great and good of the City seemed to beckon but at 40 Stuart felt the company was becoming more cautious and was losing its entrepreneurial thrust.

So he left and formed his own financial services company which he successfully built up over five years until it was taken over. He then formed Ketton Securities, a corporate finance firm which advises on corporate and investment strategies, mergers and acquisitions and finance raising. He is still Chairman of that company. Along the way he has held numerous non-executive Directorships.

All in all a very successful career – exactly what we would expect of an able Bristol graduate -  but his honorary degree is not for that. It is for his service to the University and Convocation.  Every one of our graduands today becomes automatically a member of Convocation, yet most people only have a faint idea of what Convocation is. It is the formal name of the graduate body and has two main roles. Firstly it is a formal part of our constitution and elects 100 people to our Court. The Chair of Convocation is a member of our Council, the governing body of the University. Secondly, it is a major mechanism for us to keep in contact with our alumni and to arrange social events for them. There are branches in the UK and all over the world; we currently have members of Convocation in over 160 countries.

The Chairman of Convocation is the leader of all of this and Stuart has been doing the job since 1998. It has meant numerous trips to Bristol and overseas as well as a significant amount of work in preparing for meetings and administering Convocation. Furthermore he has worked hard to develop the organisation into the 21th century and is heavily involved in changes to its structure so that it can best help the University in the future and especially over our Centenary in 2009, when the University celebrate the 100th anniversary of the granting of its Charter.

Stuart has been very committed to Convocation’s constitutional role and ensures full engagement at our annual Court meeting.  As part of that role he has been a very active and supportive member of Council, our governing body.  He also sits on numerous committees.  Stuart must know every inch of the GWR line from Paddington and back, so often has he had to travel down to Bristol – regularly at unspeakably early times of the morning.  He has given all his time free and willingly, in spite of still working full-time, and on many occasions has paid for his travel abroad himself.  Best of all is that he has combined all of this work with a great sense of humour and fun – he is a great companion.  During all of this work he has had the full support of Elinor, his wife, who has no Bristol connections but works tirelessly with Stuart in his social duties. It is a great pleasure to be able to welcome her here today and to thank her.

Stuart Goldsmith is no Post Modernist – for him the values of family, hard work, education and duty inform his life and his person. He has shown this in his service to this University over the last 14 years – he is an outstanding example to us all.

Madame Chancellor, I present to you Stuart Goldsmith, alumnus of this University and Chair of Convocation for nearly ten years, as eminently worthy of the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.