Roundtable with The Lord Price CVO, Minister of State for Trade and Investment

08:30-09:30 | Wednesday 27 April | Canning House, 14-15 Belgrave Square, London SW1X 8PS

Corporate Members are invited to join us for a roundtable with the newly appointed Minister for Trade and Investment. Lord Price’s maiden trade visit was to Mexico and he will soon lead a new one to Argentina and Colombia. At this roundtable we will share knowledge of business developments in these countries and highlight some of the issues that UK business would like Lord Price to address during his next visit.

The event will be chaired by Dr John Hughes – former British Ambassador to Argentina (2004-2008) and Venezuela (2000-2003).

Providing some introductory marks about the two countries will be - for Argentina, Jimena Blanco, Head of Americas at Verisk Maplecroft. She is an expert on governance and politics the Southern Cone of Latin America. She frequently provides advice to multinational companies and multilateral institutions on political risk in Latin America. She also frequently provide media commentary.

For Colombia, Andrew Thomson is an associate editor at LatinNews and held many senior positions at the BBC with a focus on the region. He has recently completed a paper for Canning House on the economic benefits of any future peace deal in Colombia.

Lord Price was appointed Minister of State for Trade and Investment at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) on 4 April 2016.

Lord Price joined the John Lewis Partnership in 1982 as a graduate trainee. He held a number of posts before becoming Managing Director (MD) of Waitrose in April 2007. Prior to this, in 2005, he joined the Partnership Board taking on responsibility for new business development, strategy and IT as Development Director. In August 2013, alongside his Waitrose MD role, Lord Price was also made Deputy Chairman of the John Lewis Partnership.

Lord Price was Chairman of Business in the Community from 2011 to 2015 and has also held roles as Deputy Chairman of Channel 4, Chairman of The Prince’s Countryside Fund and as a Non-Executive Member of the Cabinet Office Board.