Name: How Curiosity Propelled Sir Nigel Wilson to Canary Wharf’s Top Job
Uploaded: 2026-01-06T08:13:40.000Z
Duration: 41 min 3 s
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We all have to make big decisions in our lives, decisions that define and influence our professional and personal journeys.

Future simple

If you reflect on them, some are good and some I'm sure you'll definitely regret.

In my nearly three decades as a financial journalist, I've interviewed literally thousands of CEOs, politicians and market voices and they all had to make decisions to get to where they are today.

In this podcast, I hear about those choices as well as the moments, moments of doubt, risk and conviction that impacted our guests journeys and the people they lead.

This is Executive Decisions with me, Steve Sedgwick.

In this episode, I speak to Sir Nigel Wilson.

The world should be a wonderful place because there's tons of opportunities to do great things out there.

We're just not doing enough of those great things right now.

But the opportunity sets there to do it and really make a difference.

Nigel was the CEO of UK financial services giant Legal and General for more than 10 years before becoming chairman of the Canary Wharf Group in 2024.

But his journey to becoming one of the UK's most successful business leaders had humble beginnings on a council state in the northeast of England.

Getting a place to study at a prestigious American university helped change that course.

When the Kennedy Scholarship came through, my dad went over to the pub with me and said, I just want to tell you all, my son has just got into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

And the people in the pub went, but there's a tech at Darlington.

He tells me it was his intellectual curiosity, a drive to tackle complex industry challenges, that led him from one company to the next.

Each move shaped his philosophy on leadership.

One of the weaknesses, and I still think it's a weakness in pretty much every business, and certainly every business I've worked for, is people are really good at writing lessons, learned reports.

They're not so good at learning the lessons.

These are Sir Nigel Wilson's executive decisions.

Born in Norwich, moved up to Darlington, lived on a council estate.

Big loving family with your mother, your father, your grandmother.

But you tell me a little bit more about where Nigel Wilson comes from.

Yeah, I grew up on a. I was very lucky because I grew up on a modern council estate where modern schools had been built.

And so we had young teachers who were totally enthusiastic and enjoyed the intellectual curiosity I had.

So they were, you know, quite tolerant of some of my idiosyncrasies, which stayed with me till today.

But they gave me a lot of good advice and taught me incredibly well, in all, all parts of life, you know, sporting wise, academic wise and real values from a society point of view.

And then I went to the local grammar school, which was exactly the same, a brand new grammar school with amazing young teachers who were totally enthusiastic, you know, till his dying day.

My history teacher still tells funny stories about me being in class when I was asking, you know, questions and having contrarian views about stuff.

I had an intellectual curiosity which was, which was through my, my family, my wider family, because I had lots of people looking after me when I grew up, because I was the first, first child, first grandchild, first great grandchild and so lots of people gave me care and attention and indulged me to a certain extent.

And how important was a loving big family in evolving who you became?

It still is today, you know, I still have a lot of responsibility as the person who looks after the whole of the family, tries to make sure everyone's good, not just mentally and physically, but financially as well.

And I learned a lot from my parents, grandparents and great grandparents about the need to do that and keep the family together and keep everyone happy and jolly and trying to solve family problems, which can be very time consuming and illogical and irrational and emotive and all of those things.

But, but it's very interesting and I'm going to draw very heavily on a speech that was made about you at Newcastle University last year because there's some amazing stuff and your nan's advice was to be kind, optimistic and forgiving as well.

Yeah, I think that's brilliant advice for a start.

B, if it is accurate, how much has that formed the basis of some of the ways you've made decisions over your life?

No, I think the first two are absolutely accurate.

I found the forgiving bit more difficult when I was younger.

As you get older, you realize that's the wisdom that you get from age.

And people have to learn to be forgiving and tolerant and that's probably what's lacking in society at the moment.

And if things go wrong, be forgiving about it, you know, don't shout and rage at people because when things do go wrong, people themselves often feel terrible about them.

And picking up management teams when things go wrong has to be one of the key things you do, and shouting and yelling at them isn't the solution.

Were you a shouter and yellow, I think, when I was a young man, for instance.

Well, for a start, I was, I was A trader.

So I was shouting and yelling a lot, but I, I, I think my colleagues might disagree, but I think I've mellowed a lot over the last couple of years.

I've never been a shouter, you know, even when I captained football.

I've never been much of a shouter, even on the football pitch, you know, when I was captain of a few of the teams I played for, it was the, you know, real role to really encourage, encourage people all of the time.

And some people think shouting has a big impact and, you know, I'm a group believer as well in the theater of management.

But actually shouting, you know, rarely works and it's not a tool that I consider as being part of my toolbox to achieve good outcomes on a soccer pitch.

You were called small, fast and a little cocky.

Yeah, not good enough to be in Newcastle number nine, but still pretty good as well.

Has that been a little bit of who Nigel Wilson is off the pitch throughout life?

And unlucky, in a sense, is that when all the scouts are watching me.

When I was, you know, I was 16 and 17, I was five foot one tall and weighed about, you know, five and a half, six stone and really just got kicked every game.

And I remember I was playing semi pro football up in the northeast and after about 10 or 15 minutes I went over to the referee.

At the time I had long curly hair and I was wearing a pair of gloves, so I was tiny and I went, ref, ref, ref.

You know, somebody's, you know, savage, kick, kick, kick, and fell on me.

Somebody spat at me and somebody's punched me in the nuts.

And at the end of the game, a couple of the old pros came over to me and said, look, this is going to happen to you the rest of your life every week.

They're just going to kick and kick and kick because they hate the fact that you're quick and they can't tackle you and you whiz by and they're just going to foul you all the time.

So you're a clever lad, go to university.

But is that a metaphor for life and kind of toughened you up a little bit in business, the way you were treated on a soccer pitch?

Yeah, I learned to be tough and then I grew 10 inches.

And so when football clubs came and had a look at me again, by that time I'd gone.

I'd moved into academia by that time and I really wanted to be a very successful academic.

And I realized that lots of things had a different lifestyle and lots of people who had been amazing at 14, 15, 16 didn't make it as professional players, and very few got through to doing it.

So even if it's your dream, it doesn't naturally, naturally happen.

And the probability of success in academia was way higher than.

Yeah, for me, I say all the time to be pretty good at sports.

Oh, the thing is, I looked at it the other way around.

The fact that actually I didn't go and sign up for a football club and spend year after year after year trying to get through, not, not make it at something to try and be the best version that I can.

When I was young, I tried the best I could, but I just wasn't quite good enough.

And I realized that in you as a businessman.

I mean, look, you have been a stunningly successful businessman and we'll, we'll talk through that.

But has that guided how you've made decisions in your life?

The fact that you really want to knuckle down and be the absolute best you can?

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How Curiosity Propelled Sir Nigel Wilson to Canary Wharf’s Top Job

incredibly

tough

opportunity

term