Rick Haythornthwaite

Chairman of the Natwest Group, Ocado and The AA, and Former Chair of The Creative Industries Federation

Rick Haythornthwaite is the chairman of the FTSE-listed Ocado Group plc, chairman of The AA and the sustainability consultancy Xynteo as well as an Advisory Partner to Moelis & Co. He is a co-founder and chairman of QIO Technologies, an industrial artificial intelligence company, and director of the digital consultancy, Globant. He is also an investor in and chairman of ARC International, the global glass tableware manufacture and angel investor in a wide range of early stage technology companies. He was previously the chairman of MasterCard Inc from 2016-2020, CEO of Invensys from 2001-2005 and Blue Circle Industries from 1999-2001 having joined as Director of Asia and Europe in 1997. He spent his early career in BP from 1978-1995 before moving to Premier Oil as Commercial Director from 1995 to 1997. He has served as on the boards of Centrica and Network Rail as chairman and Cookson, Lafarge, ICI and Land Securities as non-executive director. In the UK not-for-profit sector he is the current chair of the Creative Industries Federation and Creative England and former chair of the Southbank Centre and Almeida Theatre. He was educated at MIT (Sloan Fellow) and The Queen’s College, Oxford (MA Geology).