Clara Furse

Dame Clara Hedwig Frances Furse DBE (born 16 September 1957) was the Chief Executive of the London Stock Exchange between January 2001 and May 2009, and was the first woman to occupy the position. In 2005, she was ranked 19th in Fortune magazine's most powerful women in business list. In 2007, Furse was listed among Time 100 most influential people in the world.

Biography
Furse was born in Canada to Dutch parents, and educated at schools in Colombia, Denmark, and Britain. She graduated from the London School of Economics in 1979 with a BSc in economics.

Clara Furse is the Chair of HSBC UK. She is also a non-executive Director Assicurazioni Generali S.p,A. She is a member of the Panel of Senior Advisors to Chatham House and the European Financial Services Roundtable (EFR).

In March 2021 she became Chair of the UK Voluntary Carbon Markets Forum, establishing a group that aims to operationalise a global, high integrity market for voluntary carbon credits; an essential component of an accelerated and economically productive transition to net zero. In 2012, she chaired the Lead Expert Group of the UK government's Office for Science Foresight project on The Future of Computer Trading in Financial Markets. She was a member of Bocconi University's International Advisory Council for 8 years until 2022.

She was a non-executive Director of Vodafone plc. from 2014 to 2023 and of Amadeus IT Group S.A. from 2010 to 2022. She was an External Member of the Bank of England's Financial Policy Committee (FPC); a policymaker on the new statutory body and macroprudential regulator from April 2013 until October 2016. She was a non-executive Director of Nomura Holdings from June 2010 to March 2017. For six years until April 2017, she was on the board of the UK's Department for Work and Pensions and latterly its lead independent Director.

From January 2001 to May 2009 she was Chief Executive of the London Stock Exchange, a FTSE 100 company. During this period she was also a non-executive Director of Euroclear plc, LCH Clearnet Group Ltd., Fortis SA and a member of the Shanghai International Financial Advisory Council. From 2009 to 2013, she was a non-executive Director of Legal & General plc.

Prior to joining the Exchange, Furse was Group Chief Executive of Credit Lyonnais Rouse from 1998 to 2000. Before that she spent 15 years at UBS.

Furse's career has spanned a broad range of global financial markets. She began her career in 1979 as a broker, joining Phillips & Drew in 1983. At UBS she became a managing director in 1995 and Global Head of Futures in 1996. During the 1990s she also served as a non-executive Director, committee chair and Deputy Chair of the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange (LIFFE).

Damehood
She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2008 Birthday Honours.

London Stock Exchange
Furse listed the 200-year-old exchange on its own market in 2001, which prompted a record five unsolicited or hostile bids in under two and half years from late 2004 to early 2007. A major technology upgrade to TradElect, in 2007, proved to be disastrous causing multiple severe outage, only 2 year after its 'debut', months after Clara Furse's tenure ended, Microsoft's TradElect was discarded for a cheaper and 10+ time faster Linux based solution, still in use more than a decade later, by 2009 LSE market share.  The exchange conducted a number of successful bid defences before completing its merger with Borsa Italiana in October 2007, which provided the foundation for a diversification into derivatives, fixed income, clearing and settlement.

Fortis
Furse was a non-executive Director of Fortis when the Belgian bank, in partnership with Royal Bank of Scotland and Santander, purchased ABN Amro in 2008. The acquisition led to the bailout of Fortis which was subsequently sold off in parts to the Belgian and Dutch states and BNP Paribas.