Rupert Soames OBE

Chair

Chair of the CBI since February 2024, Rupert Soames OBE is one of the UK’s most experienced public-company CEO’s, having served 11 years as CEO of Aggreko, followed by 9 years as CEO of Serco. He stepped back from full-time executive life in December 2022, and in September 2023 took up the Chair role at Smith & Nephew plc, the FTSE-50 listed medical technology company. Smith+Nephew is a medical technology business whose purpose is to restore people’s bodies and their self-belief by using advanced technology to remove the limits off living, operating through three global franchises of Orthopaedics, Advanced Wound Management and Sports Medicine & ENT.

Rupert previously served as Group Chief Executive at Serco from May 2014 until December 2022, during which time the company was transformed into a specialist supplier of services to Government in Health, Defence, Transport, Citizens Services and Justice & Immigration. Serco Group is a UK-listed public company with a market capitalisation of around £2.1bn / US$2.25bn, and employs over 53,000 people in 16 countries, including 9,000 people in the United States, 13,000 in Australia and 23,000 in the UK.

Before joining Serco, Rupert was the Group Chief Executive of Aggreko plc, the world’s leading temporary power solutions business, where he served for 11 years. During his tenure at Aggreko, the market capitalisation of the business increased from £450 million to over £5 billion, and the company provided power to whole countries in Africa, South America and Asia, as well as to all the Olympic Games.

Prior to Aggreko, he was with the software company Misys plc for five years, latterly as Chief Executive of its Banking and Securities Division. He spent the first 16 years of his career at GEC plc. He studied Politics, Philosophy & Economics at Oxford University and was President of the Oxford Union.

Rupert was a Non-Executive Director of DS Smith, the FTSE-100 packaging company until September 2022; previously he was Senior Independent Director of Electrocomponents plc and a member of the Remuneration, Nomination and Audit Committees.

Rupert is also a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University, and a Visiting Professor of Aston University, Birmingham.