Johnson Daniel Garner (born 23 June 1969) was the chief executive of Nationwide Building Society, the UK's largest mutual financial organisation, from May 2016 to June 2022. He previously held senior roles at BT's infrastructure division Openreach,

HSBC HSBC Holdings plc is a British multinational universal bank and financial services holding company. It is the largest bank in Europe by total assets ahead of BNP Paribas, with US$2.953 trillion as of December 2021. In 2021, HSBC had $10.8 tri ...

and Procter & Gamble.

Early life

Garner was born in

Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For govern ...

, having two older sisters. His father was an aeronautical engineer who had worked at

de Havilland The de Havilland Aircraft Company Limited () was a British aviation manufacturer established in late 1920 by Geoffrey de Havilland at Stag Lane Aerodrome Edgware on the outskirts of north London. Operations were later moved to Hatfield in H ...

, and had married Alegra Mizrahi in 1959. He went to school at King's College School, an independent school in Wimbledon, leaving in 1987. He studied Geography at

Magdalene College, Cambridge Magdalene College ( ) is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1428 as a Benedictine hostel, in time coming to be known as Buckingham College, before being refounded in 1542 as the College of St Mary ...

Career

Early career

Garner was a graduate trainee at Procter & Gamble (P&G) in 1991. He spent nine years at P&G including five years in Romania, then worked at their European headquarters in Brussels. He joined Dixons in 2001, initially as Marketing Director at mobile phone retailer The Link. In 2003 he played a key role in launching Immobilis
www.immobilise.com
which had the objective of reducing mobile phone theft by stopping the ability to re-programme stolen phones.

HSBC

Following his stint at P&G and a short stay at Dixons, Garner joined HSBC in 2004. He was appointed Head of UK Retail Bank on 1 December 2010 as Group General Manager and deputy head of HSBC UK, replacing Paul Thurston. He is credited with putting in place the firms approach to Treating Customers Fairly. He left at the end of October 2012. Brian Robertson was Head of HSBC Group's (combined) UK operations at the time.

BT

Garner became chief executive of BT's infrastructure division Openreach in February 2014. During his tenure superfast broadband coverage exceeded 90%. He left the company in April 2016 to become chief executive of Nationwide Building Society.

Nationwide

His role at Nationwide started on 5 April 2016, with former CEO Graham Beale stepping down on 4 April 2016. In addition to his £885,000 salary, Garner also receives a £292,000 pension allowance, a £1 million bonus and £500 a day to cover the cost of travel, security and medical expenses. In April 2020, Garner was one of the first CEOs in the financial services sector to take a salary reduction and forfeit his bonus in light of the coronavirus crisis. In March 2021 Nationwide said that its 13,000 staff could work anywhere, with Garner describing the move as "putting employees in control of where they work from". On 23 September 2021, Nationwide announced that Garner had asked the Board of the Society to start the process of finding his successor as part of an orderly transition. At Nationwide’s half-year results in November 2021, the Society stated that its profits had more than doubled versus the same period last year to £853million.” In May 2022 the Society announced its best ever financial results since it was founded in 1884 when it recorded a profit of £1.6bn for its financial year 2021/2022. In attributing the financial performance of the Society Garner said, “We have stuck to our knitting and have focused on doing it well. The key point is that all of our profit is retained and gives my successor options”. Garner was succeeded on 2 June as CEO by Debbie Crosbie, formerly CEO of TSB.

Industry roles

Garner sat on the board of UK Finance, the trade association for the finance industry, and sat on the Practitioner Panel of the

Financial Services Authority The Financial Services Authority (FSA) was a quasi-judicial body accountable for the financial regulation, regulation of the financial services industry in the United Kingdom between 2001 and 2013. It was founded as the Securities and Investmen ...

having previously been its Chair from 2011 to 2013. He was also a non-executive director of the Financial Ombudsman Service from 2008 to 2010.

Personal life

He is an keen triathlete, competing in his age group at the 2018 European Championships, coming 15th. He was chair of the Triathlon Trust from 2012-2020 and upon leaving became Patron of the

British Triathlon Federation The British Triathlon Federation (formerly the British Triathlon Association) is the national governing body for triathlon, duathlon and associated multisport in Great Britain. It administers triathlon in England, Scotland, Wales, the Channel I ...

, only the second time this honour has been bestowed on an individual.

References

External links

Openreach

British Triathlon Trust

Interview
in August 2015 on the Today programme
www.joegarner.co.uk
{{DEFAULTSORT:Garner, Joe 1969 births Alumni of Magdalene College, Cambridge British Telecom people HSBC people Living people People educated at King's College School, London