Roland Rudd

Personal life and education

Rudd was born in April 1961, one of four children of Tony Rudd, a stockbroker; his sisters are Amanda, Melissa and Amber, who was a Conservative Party Member of Parliament until September 2019, when she left the party over its stance on Brexit; she then sat as an independent MP until standing down at the subsequent general election.

As a child he wanted to be prime minister. He was educated at Millfield School. At Oxford he was friends with Hugo Dixon with whom he travelled to America to work on Walter Mondale's campaign for the Democratic Party nomination. They transferred to rival Gary Hart when Mondale could not accommodate them.

At the Sunday Correspondent, Rudd became friends with Robert Peston,

In 1994, Rudd left the Financial Times to found Finsbury with Rupert Younger. Rudd continued as chairman of the merged firm. In 2014, RLM Finsbury rebranded as just Finsbury.

In January 2021, Finsbury, The Glover Park Group (GPG), and Hering Schuppener completed their merger and management buy-in of 49.99%, and became known as Finsbury Glover Hering. Following the merger, Rudd and Carter Eskew, founder of GPG, served as co-chairs of the new firm. In December 2021, Finsbury Glover Hering and Sard Verbinnen & Co. merged and rebranded as FGS Global, with Rudd as global co-chair. In April 2023, Rudd helped negotiate a deal with KKR buying a 30% stake in FGS Global that valued the company at about $1.4 billion. In August 2024, Rudd helped negotiate a deal for KKR to buy WPP's controlling stake in FGS Global that valued the company at about $1.7 billion.

Politics Rudd believes in electoral reform and campaigned in support of the introduction of the Alternative vote system in the British referendum of 2011. a member of the Centre for European Reform's advisory board, As chairman of the People's Vote campaign, he oversaw a boardroom coup that ended up destroying the campaign at a critical juncture in UK politics (see below).

Rudd is a supporter of the Labour Party and is close to a number of Labour politicians. and Rudd campaigned for Mandelson in his Hartlepool constituency in the 2001 general election. He subsequently damaged his relationship with many figures in the Labour Party and elsewhere in politics due to his controversial role in the demise of the People's Vote campaign in 2019.

Other appointments Rudd has been Chair of Tate since 2021. He serves as Specially Appointed Commissioner at the Royal Hospital Chelsea and is an ambassador for the Alzheimer’s Society. He is currently Chair of Governors at Millfield School, a trustee for the Speakers for Schools programme, and a trustee for the Made by Dyslexia campaign. Rudd is a trustee of the Bayreuth Festival and was on the Board of the Royal Opera House from 2011 to 2017. He is a visiting fellow at Oxford University's Centre for Corporate Reputation, part of the Saïd Business School.

Open Britain controversy

On 27 October 2019, Rudd used his role as the chair of Open Britain—just one of five organisations under the People's Vote umbrella—to announce he wanted to sack the campaign's director, James McGrory, and director of communications, Tom Baldwin. More than 40 staff members walked out in protest at the decision and Rudd's attempt to impose Patrick Heneghan as the campaign's interim chief executive. At a subsequent staff meeting, Rudd lost a motion of no confidence by 40 votes to 3. Baldwin had earlier accused Rudd of taking a "wrecking ball" to a successful campaign through a "boardroom coup" while failing to consult other organisations in the campaign. Rudd later resigned as chair of Open Britain but retained control of money and data through a new holding company he had formed for the purpose called Baybridge UK. In an article for the Spectator, Alastair Campbell, the former head of strategy and communications in Tony Blair's Downing Street, accused Rudd of putting his personal status ahead of efforts to stop Brexit through a new referendum. In 2020, it was announced that former employees were preparing to sue Rudd personally.