Sir Damon Buffini

Damon Marcus Buffini was born in May 1962 in Leicester, England, to a British mother and an African-American father who had served as a United States serviceman, and was educated at Gateway Grammar-Technical School before reading law at St John's College, Cambridge, and earning an MBA at Harvard Business School.

Buffini joined the private equity industry and became a founding partner of Permira, a European private equity firm, serving as managing partner from 1999 to 2007 and chairman from 2007 to 2010, during which time he helped transform the firm into one of Europe's largest private equity houses.

Under Buffini's leadership, Permira completed high-profile acquisitions including the AA, New Look, Homebase and Birds Eye, and a 2007 profile in The Independent described him as 'the unassuming face of the new capitalism', while a former colleague called him 'the most powerful black man in Britain'.

As private equity's public profile grew more politically contentious in the mid-2000s, Buffini became the industry's de facto public spokesperson, facing union protests and criticism while consistently defending the sector's role in transforming underperforming companies through operational improvement rather than short-term asset-stripping.

Buffini has since served as Deputy Chair of the BBC Board and Chair of the BBC Commercial Board, as a governor of the Wellcome Trust, and co-founded the Social Business Trust, which supports social enterprises using the expertise and capital of major UK businesses; he was knighted and appointed CVO for his contributions to British business and public life.