Bumper payday for ex-Chancellor George Osborne

Payday: Former Chancellor George Osborne

George Osborne has shared in a £27million bumper payday in his first full year after joining a boutique City investment bank. 

The former Chancellor, who left government in 2016 after Theresa May was appointed Prime Minister, scooped a chunk of the profit which was revealed in Robey Warshaw’s accounts for the year to March 2022. 

The Mayfair-based firm has worked on a series of high-profile deals this year, including the sale of Chelsea Football Club to a group led by US billionaire Todd Boehly, and HSBC’s defence against a break-up proposed by a Chinese insurer. 

The bigger the deals, the bigger the winnings for Osborne and his colleagues. 

Rather than paying its four partners a salary, Robey Warshaw gives them a share of the profit it makes. 

Most of last year’s £26.5million, at £17.2million, went to Sir Simon Robey, the firm’s co-founder. 

The remainder was shared between the firm’s other co-founder Simon Warshaw, Osborne, and banker Philip Apostolides, though the accounts did not disclose how much each pocketed. 

Osborne’s appointment to Robey Warshaw in early 2021 propelled him into the upper ranks of the City. 

But it was just one in a string of jobs which the 51-year-old has landed since leaving Number 11. A key lieutenant in David Cameron’s Conservative government, Osborne is also chairman at the British Museum and of the ‘partners council’ which oversees Exor, the holding company of the Italian billionaire Agnelli family. 

He was editor of the Evening Standard between 2017 and 2020, and is a director of his father’s wallpaper company Osborne & Little. 

Osborne also has his work cut out at home. Last year his fiancee and former adviser Thea Rogers gave birth to their first child and the couple are now expecting their second. He has two grown-up children with his former wife Frances Osborne. 

Top brass at investment banks such as Robey Warshaw are generally paid in proportion to the work they bring in. Osborne, a Chelsea fan, is believed to have worked on the football club’s sale to Boehly. 

Over the year covered by the accounts, Robey Warshaw worked on significant deals including the £7.2billion sale of RSA Group, one of Britain’s oldest insurers, to overseas rivals and the successful attempt by textbook company Pearson to ward off takeover approaches from US private equity suitor Apollo Global. 

The investment bank made a turnover of £39.8m for the year to March 2022 – almost flat on the year before – and employed 13 members of staff, excluding Osborne and the other three partners.