ABSTRACT
Lord COLIN SHARMAN was born in 1943, the son of a regular army colonel. Brought up in the barracks town of Salisbury, Wiltshire, he was educated at the Bishops Wordsworth School, a nearby grammar school. In 1962, he took articles with the four-partner City firm, Woolger, Hennell, where three of the partners were former audit managers with Feat, Marwick, Mitchell. Moving on to Feats’ London office in 1966, Colin rose from senior clerk to senior manager in four years. Between 1970 and 1972, he was a manager in the Frankfurt office and then moved to the Hague. Given a partnership in 1973, he was partner in charge of Peats’ Netherlands operations from 1975 to 1981. Returning to London in that year in the interests of his children’s education, he filled a number of senior posts within the firm before taking over in 1994 as chairman and senior partner of what has now metamorphosed into KPMG International. Colin is perhaps unusual amongst contemporary leaders of the profession in favouring the abandonment of self-regulation in order to safeguard the professional bodies’ support function. He was elevated to the peerage in June 1999.
