Know Our Speaker


Lord Gerry Grimstone

Chairman, Gemcorp Capital & ex-UK Investment Minister
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Lord Gerry Grimstone, a member of the House of Lords, served as the UK’s Minister for Investment from 2020-2022 responsible for inward investment into the U.K and for relationships with global investors. He was a Minister both in the Department for International Trade (DIT) and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). He established, and had Ministerial responsibility for, the Office for Investment in 10 Downing St.

Before entering politics, Lord Gerry had an extensive business career including being the immediate past Chairman of Barclays Bank plc, and also of Standard Life Aberdeen, the UK’s largest savings and investments business.

He is presently Chairman of Gemcorp Capital Management whose core strategy is to invest in self-originated private credit and special situations across emerging markets. He also chairs Investcorp’s Climate Solutions Technology Fund investing growth capital to combat climate change. He sits on the Advisory Board of the UK FinTech Growth Fund, is a member of the Kingdom of Saudia Arabia’s Investment Council, and serves on Equilibrium Gulf’s International Advisory Board which advises the Bahraini Economic Development Board on various matters.

Within the UK, Lord Gerry has had a long history of serving the Ministry of Defence spanning 20 years including sitting on the Defence Board chaired by the Secretary of State for Defence as its Lead Non-Executive. The Defence Board is the senior decision-taking body in the MoD and Lord Gerry served under 6 Defence Secretaries.

From 2012-2015, Lord Gerry served as the Chairman of TheCityUK, the representative body for the financial and professional services industry in the UK. He was a member of HM Treasury’s Financial Services Trade and Investment Board.

Lord Gerry is deeply involved in UK-India relations. Standard Life Aberdeen was one of the world’s largest portfolio investors in India and, together with HDFC, founded HDFC Asset Management and HDFC Life whose board Lord Gerry sat on for many years. He was appointed by the Prime Minister to be the UK chairman of the UK-India CEO Forum and by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to be the UK chair of the India-UK Financial Partnership.

Lord Gerry was previously a senior investment banker at Schroders and ran major businesses in London, New York and Asia Pacific. He specialised in mergers and acquisitions and capital-raising for companies worldwide. Prior to that, he was an official in HM Treasury where he was responsible, during Margaret Thatcher’s time as Prime Minster, for privatisation and policy towards state-owned enterprises.

Lord Grimstone of Boscobel was knighted in 2014 for public service, particularly to Defence and Business