Who is in the running to become the BBC’s next chairman? Salaries explained - when will it be confirmed

The BBC is currently without a permanent chairman following the resignation this year of Richard Sharp, after it was discovered he failed to declare a potential conflict of interest over his relationship with Boris Johnson.

The probe into Sharp was set up after reports in the Sunday Times revealed he had played some role in Boris Johnson’s, Prime Minister at the time, personal finances at the same time as he was seeking to secure the senior BBC job.

In late 2020, Sharp sought to arrange a meeting between Cabinet Secretary Simon Case and Sam Blyth, a distant cousin of Mr Johnson who had offered to support the Prime Minister financially, after reading claims he was struggling to make ends meet.

Sharp had already applied for the senior BBC job when he approached Mr Case and was appointed a few months later.

The report found he had failed to disclose two potential perceived conflicts of interest.

First by telling Johnson he wanted to apply for the BBC role before doing so and second by telling the PM he intended to set up a meeting between Mr Case, the country’s most senior civil servant, and Mr Blyth.

Professor Dame Elan Closs Stephens is currently the Acting Chair of the BBC. She replaced Sharp on 27 June.

Dame Elan will remain in the post while the government undertakes the process to appoint a new, permanent Chair.

Applications for the role closed last Monday (18 September), however the process is expected to take several months.

As the BBC has been hit with numerous scandals in recent months it is clear that the corporation will need to be confident in their decision on who becomes the new Chair.

The series of scandals include former Radio 1 presenter Tim Westwood, the newsreader Huw Edwards and now Russell Brand.

Here we list who is in the running to become the new chair of the BBC, their background and current salaries.

Who is in the running to become the BBC’s new chairman?

Sir Damon Buffini

Sir Buffini is a former private equity executive who is now the deputy chairman of the BBC.

According to the BBC, non-executive directors receive a base fee of £33,000 per annum and Buffini received an additional £5,000 p.a. as chair of the Commercial Board.

His BBC total salary is £38,000.

It has been estimated that he has made as much as £200m over his banking career - however his origins chart back to a council estate in Leicester.

He went to Gateway grammar school and eventually to St John’s College, Cambridge, from which he graduated with a law degree in 1984.

Buffini later attended Harvard business school gaining an MBA before embarking on an investment banking career at Schroders, whose private equity arm became Permira after he led a management buyout.

He has previously been described as talkative, opinionated and gregarious.

Buffini was a founding partner of alternative asset manager Permira where he was Chairman and Managing Partner from 1997 to 2010. He remained a partner at Permira until the end of 2015 completing a 27 year career with the firm.

Buffini was a key adviser to Gordon Brown when he was prime minister.

In 2020 he was appointed as Chair of the £2bn Culture Recovery Fund which was granted and invested to ensure the survival and sustainability of the UK’s culturally significant organisations.

He is also currently Chair of the Royal National Theatre and during his career served on many other boards including Hugo Boss AG, Wellcome Trust, the Royal Shakespeare Company and Schroders PLC.

Sir William Sargent

Sargent is the founder of the visual effects company Framestore which put the magic into films such as JK Rowling and Chris Columbus’s 2001 blockbuster, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

It’s now one of the world’s largest computer graphics (CG) businesses and a visible champion of Britain’s creative industries, employing 2,500 staff globally (1,100 in London) and turning over £129m. It recently won its third Oscar for Blade Runner 2049.

According to an article in The Times from 2018 his annual salary is £240,000.

Sargent had been the CEO for 26 years, but stepped down from the role last year.

Going forward, he will focus on the wider Framestore Company 3 Group, the post-production giant that Framestore acquired with Aleph Capital and Crestview partners in 2020.

The company was born in 1986 when Sargent and a group of friends sat down over dinner to thrash out the idea of using computers to power visual effects in TV and film.

Early successes included the MTV-perfect music video for A-Ha’s Take on Me. It wasn’t until 1994 that the company first cracked the film market.

While the business was really picking up in the noughties, Sargent took on another job as a permanent private secretary in the civil service, first as chairman of the Small Business Council under Tony Blair, and later under Gordon Brown as the chief of the Better Regulation Executive.

Between 2005 and 2010, Sargent was a permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office in charge of streamlining regulation, for which he received a knighthood.

Philip Jansen

Jansen is the outgoing chief executive of BT. In July he confirmed that he would be standing down from the role that he has held since February 2019.

This year BT revealed Jansen took home a £1.8 million bonus last year. He bagged the £1.8 million in cash and share awards, on top of his £1.3 million fixed pay, taking his total pay packet for the latest financial year to £3.1 million.

It was only a slight reduction on the £3.35 million the boss took home last year.

Jansen will be remembered for navigating BT through the pandemic and instituting a £3bn plan to cut costs and staff. He also ploughed £15bn into rolling out next-generation 5G mobile and full-fibre broadband across the UK.

Before joining BT as CEO he was the Co-Chief executive of Worldpay,  a payment processing company,  from 2013.

Before that he was the CEO and Chairman of Brakes Group from 2010, following his role as COO of Sodexo, a French food services and facilities management company.

Earlier in his career, Jansen was COO of MyTravel PLC between 2002 and 2004 and was Managing Director of the Consumer Division at Telewest Communications PLC, now Virgin Media, from 2000.

He started his career with Procter and Gamble, an American multinational consumer goods corporation.