Howard Covington
Howard Covington | |
|---|---|
| Born | Eastbourne, England |
| Occupation | Investment banker |
| Years active | 1986–present |
| Known for | Founding shareholder and director of New Star Asset Management; inaugural chairperson of The Alan Turing Institute |
Howard Covington is a British investment banker recognized as a founding shareholder and director of New Star Asset Management. He notably served as the first chairman from outside academia of the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences Management Committee and was the inaugural chairperson of The Alan Turing Institute.
Education
Born in Eastbourne, England, Covington attended Eastbourne Grammar School before studying at St John's College, Cambridge. He graduated with a double first in Natural Sciences in 1974, followed by a distinction in Part III Mathematics in 1975.
Investment banking
Following his university education, Covington’s career spanned government service, offshore oil contracting, and roles within commercial and investment banking. In 1986, he joined UK investment bank SG Warburg (which later became UBS), where he attained the position of director. Over ten years, he provided strategic advice to both public and private sector clients on capital raising, mergers and acquisitions, and disposals. In 1996, he was appointed head of European investment banking at the US-based firm Wasserstein Perella.
New Star Asset Management
As a founding shareholder and director, Covington joined New Star Asset Management at its inception in 2000. He assumed the role of chief executive in 2001. Under his guidance, New Star evolved from an unprofitable startup with minimal staff into a thriving asset management company overseeing £20 billion in assets with a workforce of 400 employees. The firm went public on the London Stock Exchange in 2005 and was subsequently acquired by Henderson in April 2009.
The Alan Turing Institute
Covington held the position of inaugural chairman at Alan Turing Institute, the UK’s national centre for data science and artificial intelligence research, from 2015 to 2022. Founded through a collaboration between the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and prominent universities such as Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford, UCL, and Warwick, the institute is based at the British Library in London. By 2018, it had expanded to include eight additional university partners and supported more than 400 researchers spanning mathematics, statistics, machine learning, computer science, and social sciences.
ClientEarth
Between 2018 and 2023, Covington chaired ClientEarth, an environmental law charity where he had served as trustee since 2014. Operating across Europe, Africa, and China, ClientEarth focuses on developing and enforcing environmental legislation, educating judges and prosecutors to safeguard public health, accelerating the energy transition, and conserving biodiversity.
Positions held
Covington’s leadership roles have included chairing the management committee at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (2008–2017), serving as trustee of the Science Museum (London) (2008–2016), trustee of the Royal Institution (2011–2013), and membership on the advisory board of Oxford University’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment (from 2022 onwards). He has contributed articles on climate change to publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Nature Geoscience, and Nature. Covington is a fellow of the Institute of Physics as well as an honorary fellow of both the Isaac Newton Institute and the Alan Turing Institute.