Sir David Bell will be the next Chairman of the Press Syndicate, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge has announced. Sir David will take up the position early in the new academic year.
The University of Cambridge’s statutes provide for the Vice-Chancellor or a duly appointed deputy to act as Chairman of the Press Syndicate, the body which supervises the affairs of the Press on behalf of the University, comprising senior academics from the University of Cambridge and external members.
Professor Tony Minson, former Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, Professor of Virology and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, has been Chairman of the Syndicate since 2009 and will be stepping down as planned as he approaches the end of his term.
Sir David Bell was appointed Chief Executive of the Financial Times in 1993 and was its Chairman from 1996 to 2009. In July 1998 he was also appointed Pearson’s Director for People with responsibility for the recruitment, motivation, development and reward of all its employees. Sir David Bell is a non-executive director of The Economist. He retired as a director of Pearson plc at the end of 2009 after 13 years on the Board. He is currently serving on the Leveson Enquiry.
Sir David was born in Henfield, Sussex, and educated at the University of Cambridge and the University of Pennsylvania.
The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, expressed his deep gratitude to Professor Minson for his transformative leadership over the past three years, and said: “Cambridge University Press, and the Syndicate which governs it, is of great strategic importance to the University. I am delighted both personally and on behalf of the University to have secured the services of so distinguished a business figure and publisher as Sir David Bell to chair the Press Syndicate in the coming years.”
