Richard Haythornthwaite

Richard Neil "Rick" Haythornthwaite (born December 1956) is a British business executive. He is well-known for leading several companies including being the chairman of MasterCard and the Creative Industries Federation.

Previously, he was also made independent non-executive chairman of Ocado Group, replacing Ocado Group chairman Stuart Rose by the time of the company's May 2021 annual general meeting.

Currently, he serves as chair of NatWest Group, a post he has held since 2024, non-executive director of The AA, and advisory partner at investment bank, Moelis & Co.

Early life Richard Neil Haythornthwaite was born in December 1956. He graduated from The Queen's College, Oxford, where he received a bachelor of arts degree in geology. He earned a master's degree from the MIT Sloan School of Management as a Sloan Fellow.

Career Haythornthwaite was an executive for BP from 1978 to 1995. He worked as General Manager of the Magnus oilfield, operated by BP Exploration, and later worked as the president of BP Venezuela. He worked as the chief executive officer of Invensys from 2001 to 2005.

Haythornthwaite became chairman of MasterCard in May 2006 He stepped down as chairman at Mastercard with effect from January 2021, to assume the role of independent non-executive chairman for Ocado Group, after Ocado's AGM in May 2021.

Haythornthwaite has served on the boards of directors of the Imperial Chemical Industries, Lafarge, Premier Oil and Land Securities. He was chairman of Centrica from January 2014 to February 2019.

In March 2021, Rick Haythornthwaite was appointed non-executive chairman of The AA. He later stepped down from his position as chairman to take up a new role as chairman of NatWest in September 2023,

Philanthropy Haythornthwaite served as the chairman of the board of governors of the Southbank Centre for seven years, standing down in January 2015. He also served as the chairman of the board of the World Wide Web Foundation. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In April 2022 it was announced that the UK prime minister had approved the appointment of Haythornthwaite to chair an independent review of the terms and conditions of service of the UK Armed Forces.