Gus O'Donnell, Baron O'Donnell

Gus O'Donnell, Baron O'Donnell

Augustine Thomas "Gus" O'Donnell, Baron O'Donnell GCB (born October 1, 1952 ) is a British economist , diplomat and government official who has been a Life Peer member of the House of Lords since 2012 .

Life

After visiting the Salesian College in London O'Donnell began studying economics at the University of Warwick , which he with a Master of Philosophy (M.Phil.) At Nuffield College of the University of Oxford graduated. He was then 1975-1979 Lecturer of Political Economy at the University of Glasgow and then joined as an economist in the Treasury ( Treasury ) before it between 1985 and 1988 as First Secretary at the Embassy in the United States in the foreign service was active. In 1988 he returned to the Treasury as Senior Economic Advisor and was press secretary to Chancellor John Major between 1989 and 1990 .

After Major in 1990 as a successor to Thatcher Margaret Prime Minister was, O'Donnell was the press secretary and held this position until 1994. During this time he was one of the participants in a meeting of the War Cabinet , as on 7 February 1991 by the Provisional Irish Republican Army , a Grenade attack on No. Downing Street 10 was perpetrated. In 1994 he was named Companion of the Order of the Bath for his services to date .

He then returned to the Treasury and was its Vice-Director until 1997 and at the same time British representative on the Monetary Committee of the European Union before he moved to the US Embassy as envoy for economic questions and was also British Executive Director at the International Monetary Fund (IMF ) as well as at the World Bank . Just a few months later, however, he returned to the Treasury, where he was both head of the Directorate for Macroeconomics and Foresight and head of the government's economic service until 2000 . After a subsequent assignment there as executive director for macroeconomics and international finances and as representative of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the Group of Eight , he became Permanent Secretary to HM Secretary in 2002 and was thus the highest administrative officer in the Treasury until 2005. For his services there, O'Donnell was Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath and from then on carried the suffix "Sir".

After completing his duties in the Treasury, he was appointed Cabinet Secretary by Prime Minister Tony Blair on December 1, 2005, succeeding Andrew Turnbull , and was also Permanent Secretary in the Cabinet Office and Head of Her Majesty's Home Civil Service . These functions he held under Blair's successor Gordon Brown and David Cameron until his entry into the retirement on 31 December 2011. Subsequently, he was awarded the Grand Cross (Knight Grand Cross) awarded the Order of the Bath. The positions he held were then divided: while Jeremy Heywood became Cabinet Secretary, Bob Kerslake became Head of Public Services and Ian Watmore became the new Permanent Secretary in the Cabinet Office.

O'Donnell was raised to the nobility by a letters patent dated January 10, 2012 as a life peer entitled Baron O'Donnell , of Clapham in the London Borough of Wandsworth . Shortly thereafter took place its introduction (Introduction) as a member of the House of Lords . In the upper house he belongs to the group of non-party members, the so-called Crossbencher .

O'Donnell has worked for the London-based consultancy Frontier Economics since 2012.

Web links

• Entry on Parliament's homepage (accessed on October 26, 2012)
• Entry in the Hansard
• Entry in They Work For You (accessed October 25, 2012)
• Biography in Debrett’s (accessed on October 26, 2012)