Jonathan Bloomer, City executive who was witness in Mike Lynch trial

Over a glass of champagne in 2006, Jonathan Bloomer said: “There are always going to be winners and losers.’’ He was launching Lucida, one of a growing number of startups specialising in buying and running closed pension schemes. But this was no sober-sided actuaries’ get-together. They were gathered in the Porsche Centre in Mayfair, central London, and the presentation was hosted by the Top Gear presenter James May and the wine critic Oz Clarke.
“We like the connotations of Lucida,’’ said Bloomer, who was the new firm’s executive chairman. “It means clarity, is a clear typeface, is a cut of a Tiffany diamond and is the constellation’s brightest star. We are trying to make it [the pensions buyout market] more straightforward and clear to people.’’
The likes of Lucida were charging up to 25 per cent of a client firm’s pension liabilities to take over a scheme, hoping that by pooling and running several pension pots they could generate a healthy return for themselves. Marc Hommel, pensions partner at the accountants PwC, said: “There is huge growing interest from corporations looking to either transfer pension risk or completely offload pension liabilities from their balance sheets.’’ Bloomer and his backers sold Lucida for £150 million just seven years later.
By then he had spent a year on the board of Mike Lynch’s technology firm, Autonomy, chairing the audit committee up to the time in 2011 when it was taken over by the US-based Hewlett Packard. In May this year Bloomer took the witness stand in San Francisco to defend Lynch against fraud charges. “Mike was mostly interested in the strategy, new products, new areas to look at and potential acquisitions,” said Bloomer. “For example, he didn’t come to the audit committee and wasn’t particularly interested in the finance side.”
Bloomer’s association with Lynch was a step in his long journey back to the top rank of business, after an accident-ridden spell running the insurer Prudential Corporation. A former partner at the accounting firm Arthur Andersen, he joined the Pru as its finance director in 1995 before becoming chief executive in 2000, just as the stock market peaked, the dotcom bubble burst and the global economy went into a dive. Although like most people who work in the City he was no shrinking wallflower, he tried to keep a low profile and not rub people up the wrong way. For the most part, he was successful in doing this.
He was criticised in 2001 for failing to buy American General, a deal that would have made the combined group a world leader in its field. He came under pressure again in 2003 when a cash crisis forced the group to cut its dividend by 40 per cent, its first reduction since 1914. The following year he failed to sell the Pru’s controlling stake in Egg, a fledgling internet bank, then infuriated shareholders with a £1 billion cash-raising share issue that earned the headline “Another Bloomer from the Pru”. To make it worse, his plan was to invest the proceeds in the mature British pensions and savings market, regarded by many Pru shareholders as a backwater.
Some influential investors were so incensed by the U-turn that they called for Bloomer’s head. A set of excellent 2004 annual results seemed to save him, but only briefly. Hearing of a mooted reprieve, institutional shareholders besieged the chairman, Sir David Clementi, to tell him Bloomer had to go. One said: “I couldn’t believe this company still hadn’t got it after all it had been through.” Clementi was reportedly shocked by the extent to which he was harassed by shareholders. Bloomer meanwhile admitted to friends: “I am on my way out.”
As soon as he walked into Clementi’s office on returning from a trip to Hong Kong in March 2005 he knew something was wrong. The atmosphere was tense and the softly spoken Clementi told him: “You have to go.” He asked Bloomer not to tell the executives, because his departure would not be announced for a few days. Bloomer allegedly told Clementi to get lost and immediately told his closest colleagues.
Pandemonium broke out. The management had been kept in the dark, and now demanded a meeting with Clementi. But on March 24, he finally announced the decision and the share price jumped by 5 per cent. Bloomer said publicly he was “extremely disappointed”, masking his anger at how he had been removed. “The market was concerned about a number of things about the company with Bloomer in charge, and so some of those reservations went away,” Nigel Cobby, managing director of European equities at JP Morgan, said. “It was certainly good for sentiment, and longer-term it probably means they will become a more focused company. That has to be a good thing.”
After the Pru, in an attempt to rebuild his career, Bloomer took several board roles, including the chairmanship of the international operations of Morgan Stanley, the Wall Street financial group. His appointment last year as chairman of the specialist Lloyd’s of London insurer Hiscox, a member of the FTSE 100 index of the biggest London-listed companies, was seen by City commentators as marking his return to the top ranks of corporate Britain.
Jonathan William Bloomer was born in 1954, one of three sons of Derick and Audrey Bloomer. He attended Halesowen Grammar School and read physics at Imperial College London. In 1977 he married Anne Elizabeth Judith May, known as Judy, a psychotherapist. They were together for five decades, and she was with him on board the Bayesian, a 184ft luxury yacht, when it sank in a storm off the coast of Sicily in the early hours of Monday morning. Devoted to family life, they had a son and two daughters.
Bloomer qualified as a chartered accountant in 1982 and became a partner in Arthur Andersen five years later, before moving to the Pru.
In 2006 he became a partner in Cerberus European Capital Advisors, and chief executive of Lucida, a venture set up by Cerberus. At the same time, he was made senior independent director of the wealth manager Hargreaves Lansdown. He was chairman of Scottish Re from 2007 to 2012, JLT Employee Benefits Gp from 2013 to 2016 and the debt recovery firm Arrow Global Group from 2013 to 2021. He was a director of Change Real Estate from 2013 to 2020, chairman of DWF, the London-listed law firm, from 2020 to 2023 and was chairman of SDL, a property auctioneer, at the time of his death.
Bloomer also put in time working for the public good. He was on the board of the Association of British Insurers from 2001 to 2005, chairman of the Financial Services Practitioner Panel, 2003–05 and a member of the Panel on Takeovers and Mergers, 2011–17. He was trustee and treasurer of the NSPCC, 2009–16, and chairman of trustees at Caterham School, 2010–15. He was appointed MBE in 2017 for voluntary services to children and young people.
His hobbies were sailing, gardening and watching rugby. When he was sacked from the Pru he took the summer off to spend some of his £2 million payoff watching the British and Irish Lions tour of New Zealand.
Jonathan Bloomer MBE, banker and businessman, was born on March 23, 1954. His death, alongside that of his wife, Judy, was announced on August 22, 2024. He was aged 70