Mark Austen
Mark Austen is a non-executive director of Standard Bank PLC, the Temenos Group AG, the Liverpool Victoria Friendly Society, Mott MacDonald Group Ltd and the Philharmonia Trust. He is also chairman of the Fair Food Foundation - a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to helping people make informed choices about the food they eat.
A qualified accountant Mark began his career at Reed International (now Reed Elsevier) moving in 1972 to Fraser Ansbacher, a merchant banking group, joining Price Waterhouse in 1975.
At Price Waterhouse, he became a partner in 1982 and, within its successor firm PricewaterhouseCoopers ("PwC"), Mark held a number of senior line management positions in the practice - mostly in financial services. In a long career, he advised a very wide range of financial institutions around the world from governments, regulators and exchange & clearing organisations to participants at every level from the very largest global banks.
He served for five years on the Global Management Board of the consulting practice of PwC (revenues c $5bn per annum). In addition, he was one of the 15 elected members of the PwC Global Board (revenues c $21bn) from 2000-2002 before joining IBM as part of the deal to hive off PwC's consulting practice.