David Saunders and Gunner Burkhart have been appointed as senior advisers at the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
Saunders has worked for over 35 years as a civil servant in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and its predecessors. He has experience of business sponsorship, privatisation, export support and regulation.
He was head of consumer and competition policy at BIS for four years, which included responsibility for consumer credit policy, before becoming the chief executive of the Competition Commission (CC) in early 2009. He retired from the CC in March 2014 and is a special advisor at Europe Economics.
Burkhart has held a number of senior management and leadership roles throughout his career. Originally based in New York, Gunner moved to London in 1989 and has been managing global businesses from here since then.
He spent 15 years at Goldman Sachs and was managing director, co-head of the European equities business. In 2001, Burkhart joined Deutsche Asset Management on the executive committee as global head of trading and broker relationship management. At Deutsche Gunner’s team launched the first online broker evaluation programme to provide transparency on Deutsche Asset’s commission spend.
Burkhart then joined Lehman Brothers in 2004 as managing director of senior relationship management in Europe, working for the firm’s executive committee managing some of their largest hedge fund and asset management client relationships. He also ran the firm’s capital markets prime services business in Europe.
Following his experience at Lehman Brothers, Burkhart worked for PWC, assisting in the administration of the Lehman estate before moving to Nomura International as managing director/global head of senior relationship management and prime services.
Martin Wheatley, chief executive of the FCA, said: “Both David and Gunner come with impressive experience in their respective areas, which will be a valuable resource for the teams as they look at competition and wholesale issues. I’m delighted to have them on-board.”
