Rupert Pennant-Rea

In July 2009, Pennant-Rea was appointed non-executive chairman of The Economist Group, having served as a non-executive director since August 2006.. In July 2018, after nine years, he was succeeded by Paul Deighton. He was Chairman of Royal London, Chairman of PGI, an agriculture company. He was a National Independent director of Times Newspapers. Pennant-Rea recently became Chairman of two start-ups: CloudCycle and Origen Power, both related to greenhouse gases reduction.

Pennant-Rea was chairman of British company The Stationery Office following its privatisation in 1996. He was a British American Tobacco director from 1998 to 2007. He was also Chairman of Henderson Group and a non-executive director of Go-Ahead Group, a transport company, First Quantum and Gold Fields, both mining companies.

In 1995 he became a director of a Canadian mining company, Sherritt International. In March 1996, he was banned from the USA (along with his wife at the time and under-age children) because of Sherritt's commercial interests in Cuba, under the terms of the USA's Helms-Burton Act.

In 1994 he became a member of the influential Washington-based financial advisory body, the Group of Thirty.

Pennant-Rea joined the Bank of England in 1973 and remained until 1977, when he left to work for The Economist magazine. He was the magazine's editor from 1986 until 1993. Between 1993 and 1995, he again joined the Bank of England as Deputy Governor of the bank, under the governorship of Edward George; he resigned following reports of an extramarital affair with Mary Ellen Synon, whom he had met at Trinity College, Dublin.

Rupert Lascelles Pennant-Rea (born 23 January 1948) is a British businessman, journalist, and former Deputy Governor of the Bank of England. He was Editor and later Chairman of The Economist Group.