Peter Sands’s office bears no resemblance to the stereotypical staid lair of a pin-striped banker. Instead, a luridly painted miniature lorry from Pakistan sits on the coffee table, while a giant lump of coins from a shipwreck off China, stuck together with coral and their copper content having turned them green, lays on the floor.
Standard Chartered’s emerging markets focus informs more than its interior decoration. The health problems prevalent in its markets help to set the focus of the bank’s community work.
Mr Sands is passionate about Standard Chartered’s HIV/Aids awareness programme. “This isn’t an easy topic and so a lot of the time it is our younger staff who are prepared to stand about in front of staff or customers and talk about sex,” he said.
Less than a decade ago, 10 per cent of Standard Chartered’s African workforce was absent each day for HIV/Aids-related reasons. Mr Sands admits that the improvement wrought by the awareness programme is difficult to calculate, but added: “Sometimes you want to do something just because it’s the right thing to do.”
Mr Sands had a rapid ascent to the top of Standard Chartered. He joined McKinsey in 1988 and was made a partner of the consultancy by the age of 34. He had climbed to director level by the time that he left in 2006 to become Standard Chartered’s finance director.
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Within 4 years of joining, he was appointed chief executive of the bank in a surprise management reshuffle.
Before joining McKinsey, Mr Sands worked for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He is a graduate of Oxford University and has a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard University. Born in Asia and married with four children, Mr Sands is a season ticket-holder at Arsenal.