After short periods of work at 3i and McKinsey Pitt-Watson helped establish and was ultimately managing director of Braxton Associates Limited. He worked there for 17 years during which time it was bought by Deloitte and became Deloitte Consulting. Pitt-Watson was a partner at Deloitte for 12 years advising company boards and international agencies on strategy and competitiveness. He left that position in 1997 to become Assistant General Secretary of the Labour Party, a post he held for two years before joining Hermes Fund Managers as commercial director of their newly formed shareholder activist funds. These funds, known as the Focus Funds, grew to be the largest of their kind in Europe. David became head of the funds and a director of Hermes in 2004, where he founded , a service to pension funds which aims to ensure that shares they own are used to promote good management practice and sustainable investment. By 2018 HEOS advised on over £400bn worth of assets. Hermes interventions in companies have led to the successful turnaround of some of the country's largest companies. For over twenty years he has advised policy makers of all parties, including Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, on issues of industrial and financial policy, corporate governance and financial market regulation. He has also advised the current government and was a member of the cross-party Future of Banking Commission, chaired by David Davis, and the Sharman Commission relating to the use of the Going Concern rules.
Author
He co-authored with Stephen Davis and Jon Lukomnik, published by Yale University Press in 2016. It describes how the financial system, whose services are essential to the economy, has become dysfunctional, and how this problem can be addressed. With Davis and Lukomnik, he also wrote The New Capitalists, which describes how structures of corporate governance can help ensure companies work in the interest of the millions of individuals who own their shares. It was published in November 2006 by Harvard Business School Press and translated into five languages. He also co-authored with Carol Scott Leonard, Privatisation and Transition in Russia in the early 1990s, based on his experience as a strategic adviser to the World Bank. He is the author of The Hermes Principles, which lays out the expectations of Hermes of the companies in which it invests, and forms the rationale for Hermes interventions in under performing companies. Together with these publications, Pitt-Watson has written numerous papers and articles, and has been a regular contributor to British newspapers.
Charity work and public service
David chaired the UN Environment Programme's Finance Initiative, a unique partnership between the UN and over 200 financial institutions in the run up to the 2015 . Its aim is to identify, promote and realise best sustainability practices within the finance industry. He was a trustee and treasurer of Oxfam GB from 2011– 2017, where he had been closely involved in helping to establish its Enterprise Development Programme. David was a trustee of Nesta, the innovation charity where he chaired its £400million endowment. He is a trustee of the Institute for Public Policy Research and was founding chair of the Speakers' Corner Trust. At the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce he established the Tomorrow's Investor programme. It has been influential in raising the debate and achieving a consensus for reform to improve the structures, costs and transparency of pensions in Britain. In February 2000 he helped initiate and served on the Co-operative Commission which aimed to help revive the fortunes of the UK Co-operative movement. He was also a councillor on Westminster City Council from 1986 to 1990.
Academic appointment
In addition to his Fellowship at Cambridge, David held the Pembroke Visiting Professorship in 2018. He was Executive Fellow at London Business School from 2012 to 2017 and Visiting Professor of Strategic Management at Cranfield University School of Management from 1990 to 1996.
Publications
Davis, Stephen; Lukomnik, Jon; Pitt-Watson, David. The New Capitalists: How Citizen Investors are Reshaping the Corporate Agenda. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
