The honorary degree of Master of the University was conferred upon David Edwin Gill on 16 July 2002. The citation, read by the Academic Registrar Mr J B Alexander, was as follows:
"My Lord and Chancellor, David Gill is a banker. Not an ordinary banker, but a very specialist one, possessed of understanding and skills of especial importance to the UK.
"To understand his journey – which has been rapid - to a senior position in the UK banking industry it is necessary to know something of the man. David is a man who never sees challenges – only opportunities.
"As a schoolboy, David Gill faced the unusual challenge – or opportunity – of undertaking his education in a foreign language. He attended the Lycee Francais de Londres (Charles de Gaulle) achieving nine O-Levels, four A-Levels and one S-Level pass. Though he might perhaps have continued his education at the Sorbonne, fortunately for us, he took instead a place at the University of Cambridge, in Magdalene College, to read English. Who knows, he might otherwise have taken his talents to another European country. As things were, in 1981 he completed study at Cambridge having taken a very good degree.
"Many young men possessed of a brilliant new degree in English, if asked about a bank, would have said that they know it as a place where the wild thyme grows – and that they were going to find it and rest their heads there. Not so David Gill. This did not represent sufficient opportunity for him. Instead, he went to City University to take a Diploma in Law. For those not aware of the nature of these high-pressure courses, let me explain that the Diploma in Law entails covering, in one year, the essential elements required to practise law in the UK. In 1982 he went on to the Inns of Court School of Law, as a Harmsworth Major Exhibitioner, and was called to the Bar in 1983. For most people, the next stage to being a barrister is the difficult task of finding a pupillage. David Gill experienced no such problems; he won the Winston Churchill Pupillage Award and undertook his pupillage at Lincoln’s Inn in Chancery and Commercial Law. As if this was not enough opportunity, he simultaneously followed an Oxford University Business Economics Programme, in the process submitting a prize-winning study on European Monetary Union. How he relishes opportunity!
"Armed with an excellent degree from Cambridge, qualification as a barrister and experience in the Courts, and clearly top of the class in the Oxford Business School, David was ready to forge a career. He might have devoted himself to a further three years of study for a PhD, followed by three or four years of post-doctoral research, in the expectation of an appointment on the first rung of the Lectureship scale in an academic career. Instead, he went to Chase Investment Bank Ltd as an Associate in the Corporate Finance Department where, over seven years, he dealt with public take-over offers for listed companies, new equity issues, rights issue and open offers of ordinary equity, straight and convertible preference stock and mortgage debenture issues. In 1985 he moved to HSBC – the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.
"Initially Assistant Director, Corporate Finance Department, David’s responsibilities included advising private and quoted companies on business planning, flotation, delisting, ESOPs and equity investment – and much else. During this time he became contributing editor of the bank’s Guide to Corporate Finance – a 500-page internal publication for practitioners.
"In 1995 David became Deputy Head, Business Banking where he ran a Head Office department of over 30 staff covering all aspects of profitability, product management and market information for the entire commercial sector. Here his personal responsibilities included having regular contact with the Bank of England, HM Treasury and DTI on policy and compliance issues in the business sector, frequent briefings for MPs, the media and other opinion formers and, critically, for management of the Bank’s seed capital funds and fund raising follow-on capital.
"David Gill’s work in raising capital for new, technology-based businesses was vital. It was Bob Hope who coined the aphorism that “a bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don’t need it”. But new businesses, with just an idea – with intellectual capital that may, with the right support, be developed into a profitable and innovative product line – have absolutely no track record to prove anything.
"It was exactly this opportunity that led David to his current position – as Head of Innovation and Technology Unit for HSBC. David has established HSBC as the leading UK bank for technology-based smaller firms by setting up a range of support services – a national network of technology banking managers, a bank funded seed capital fund, a range of major sponsorship schemes based on science parks and incubation centres, and through publishing detailed research on technology finance overseas.
"But the initiative closest to Brunel has been David Gill’s work in creating formal commercial co-operation arrangements with research universities through the creation of two HSBC professorial Chairs of Innovation – for technology transfer, technical appraisals and staff training. One of those professorial chairs is based here at Brunel. My colleague Professor Clive Butler provides for HSBC appraisals of the soundness of the science and technology underlying requests for start-up capital or development funding, and in other ways provides background to HSBC on which the Bank can make informed financial decisions.
"At the outset of this citation I said that David Gill’s specialist interest was of importance to the UK – and by now you will see why that is the case. It has long been recognised that Britain is brilliantly good at developing new ideas but appallingly bad at exploiting those ideas commercially. Well over half of the research that led to new exploitable ideas in the twentieth century came out of Britain’s universities and research laboratories – yet only tiny proportions of those ideas were taken up by UK industry. Most of the last century’s significant discoveries, though made in Britain, were developed into new commercial products in Japan or the USA. For a country like the UK, reliant as it is on the exploitation of intellectual capital to make its living, we must make better use of the ideas that emerge from research universities. David Gill is a key player nationally in making possible the commercial development of new technologies – so we should look after him rather carefully.
"Chancellor, for his key role in the provision of specialist banking facilities for start-up and developing industries, and for his very positive role in developing links with this University, I present to you David Edwin Gill for the degree of Master of the University, honoris causa."
MUniv - July 2002
