Sir Win Bischoff: City legend hangs up his bowler hat

Sir Win Bischoff, who has been at the heart of the City of London for decades, is retiring. It’s just a shame that he’s not departing on a higher note, says Jane Lewis.

"Audit watchdog leaders quit in overhaul after scandals". So ran a headline in The Guardian in March, announcing the disbandment of the Financial Reporting Council. It won't be much missed. Criticised for the "weakness of its response" to a spate of accounting failures, ranging from Carillion to BHS, the FRC was recently slammed by MPs as "too timid".

It's hardly a rousing finale to the sometime sparkling career of its chairman, Sir Win Bischoff, who will step down in October after a half-century career in finance, says the Financial Times. Appointed CEO of Schroders aged just 42, Bischoff, now 78, "has been a quietly subversive financier at the heart of the City of London for decades" "a wine-sipping fixture at Square Mile social events most nights of the week".

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.