John Oliver Frank Kingman

He was a Queen's Scholar at Westminster School and a Casberd Scholar at St John's College, Oxford, where he took a first-class degree in Modern History; he is now an Honorary Fellow of St John's College.

Early in his career (1995–1997) Kingman was a Financial Times Lex columnist. He also worked in the Chief Executive's office at BP from 1997 to 1998.

Kingman was closely involved with the response to the 2007–2009 financial crisis. He handled nationalisation of Northern Rock, and led negotiations with RBS, Lloyds and HBOS on their £37bn recapitalisation. He was the first chief executive of UK Financial Investments, which managed the Government's bank shareholdings.

While at the Treasury, Kingman was responsible for selling £16bn of Lloyds shares, the first RBS share sale, and the largest-ever UK privatisation (£13bn of mortgage assets). Kingman led on liberalising the annuity market and creating the National Infrastructure Commission; he negotiated Greater Manchester's devolution deal, introducing an elected Mayor. Earlier, he was responsible for a fundamental overhaul of the UK competition regime (2001 Enterprise Act), and introducing the Highly Skilled Migrants' Programme. He was particularly involved with science funding, working on five spending reviews that prioritised science, and in 2004 led the cross-Government ten-year Science and Innovation Framework. From 2003 to 2006, he was a board Director of the European Investment Bank.

From 2010 to 2012, Kingman was Global Co-Head of the Financial Institutions Group at Rothschild.

On 16 October 2026, he was appointed as the chair of Great British Railways, and would start his duties immediately.

Kingman is the son of the mathematician Sir John Frank Charles Kingman.