Professor Colyn Gardner BA, MSc, PhD, FCIBS, FRSA
Banker, Businessman & Academic
(ABGS 1960-1967)

Professor Colyn Gardner is the founder of the DC Gardner banking training company, a business he started in 1984. The company grew to become the leading banking training consultancy in the world and a main UK Stock Market listed company with offices in London, New York, Amsterdam, Singapore and Sydney. DC Gardner is now owned by Euromoney Publishing and remains the leading brand in the banking training industry with a worldwide reputation for high quality executive education programmes.

Colyn was born and brought up at Abercwmboi, the son of the late Bryn Gardner, who owned the village hairdresser’s shop, and Esme Gardner, now in her 90s and living in Essex. From Cap Coch School Colyn entered ABGS in 1960 leaving in 1967 after gaining three B’s in History, English and Scripture Knowledge at ‘A’ level, enough to enable him to gain entrance to Swansea University, from which he graduated in 1970.

He admits to being a rather rebellious schoolboy at ABGS, preferring his extra curricula activities of playing drums in a popular local rock band, and playing football for the top valley football team, Abercwmboi Athletic, affectionately known by the opposition as “the Dirty Dozen”. Colyn maintains this was more to do with their style of play then any personal hygiene comments.

Colyn’s early career was spent as a graduate trainee in the retail banking business at NatWest, before moving into investment banking where he became a Vice President of Bankers Trust Company, before setting up the City of London based DC Gardner company. As a banking consultant, he has worked with many of the world’s leading banks and is a sought after speaker at international banking conferences. He has been amongst others a keynote speaker at an IMF Conference in Washington. He has also been an adviser to many Central Banks and the World Bank. In the early 1990s Colyn was a Non Executive Director of the Welsh Development Agency for a period. He is an Honorary Fellow of the University of Wales.

Colyn has a distinguished academic career following his sale of the DC Gardner business. He has an M.Sc. in Financial Economics and a Ph.D. in Corporate Finance from the UK’s No. 1 banking and finance school in Bangor and is a Fellow of the Chartered Banker Institute. He was the CEO of the Management Centre at Bangor University where he was responsible for guiding the creation of the Chartered Banker MBA degree. The only dual qualification MBA degree in banking.

He is currently the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Sunway University and Dean of Sunway University Business School, Kuala Lumpur. He is also a member of the newly formed Financial Service Talent Council at Bank Negara, Malaysia’s Central Bank. This is a high level think tank charged with developing human resource talent for the emerging financial services sector in Malaysia. Colyn’s entire career has been spent either as a practising banker or as a specialist banking industry consultant and professor of banking.

Colyn is married to Liz Davies (one of the original founders of Next plc) and they have three children, Lucia, Jessica and Huw. The family live in North Wales, London and Kuala Lumpur. The whole family are passionate Welsh Rugby supporters.

 

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