Professor Colin Mayer

Colin Mayer is Emeritus Professor of Management Studies at the Blavatnik School of Government and the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford.  He is an Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford and an Honorary Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford and St Anne’s College, Oxford.  He is a Fellow of the British Academy and the European Corporate Governance Institute.  He is on the Board of Trustees of the Oxford Playhouse and was a member of the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal, the UK Government Natural Capital Committee and the International Advisory Board of the Securities and Exchange Board of India.   He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to business education and the administration of justice in the economic sphere.

Colin Mayer was the first professor at the Saïd Business School in 1994, the Peter Moores Dean of the Business School between 2006 and 2011, and the first Director of the Oxford Financial Research Centre between 1998 and 2005.  He was a Harkness Fellow at Harvard University, a Houblon-Norman Fellow at the Bank of England, the first Leo Goldschmidt Visiting Professor of Corporate Governance at the Solvay Business School, Université de Bruxelles, and has had visiting positions at Columbia, MIT and Stanford universities. 

Colin Mayer was chairman of Oxera Ltd. between 1986 and 2010 and assisted in building the company into what is now one of the largest independent economics consultancies in Europe.  He was a founding director of the energy modelling company, Aurora Energy Research Ltd.  He advises companies, governments, international agencies and regulators around the world, and he led the British Academy enquiry into “the Future of the Corporation”.  He is the author of Firm Commitment: Why the Corporation is Failing Us and How to Restore Trust in It, and Prosperity: Better Business Makes the Greater Good both published by Oxford University Press.

Colin Mayer researches in the fields of corporate finance, governance, regulation, taxation and the role of the corporation in contemporary society. He has worked on international comparisons of financial systems and corporate governance and their effects on the financing and control of corporations.