Obituary: Former IoD chair Lady Barbara Judge
Lady Barbara Judge, who has died aged 73 from pancreatic cancer, was a trailblazer in a varied career which spanned law, banking, regulation, media and the nuclear industry.
An outspoken advocate for the accession of women in the workplace, she broke barriers becoming the first female director at Rupert Murdoch’s media giant News International and the first female chair of the Institute of Directors, though her career was not without its controversies.
At age 33 she became the youngest commissioner at the US Securities and Exchange Commission and only the second woman in the role.
Born Barbara Singer Thomas in New York in 1946, she studied medieval history at the University of Pennsylvania before graduating from the New York University School of Law. She was elected a partner at US law firm Kaye, Scholar, Fierman, Hays & Handler before moving into regulation and government work.
In 1980, President Carter appointed Judge as a member of the US SEC, where she was instrumental in opening up capital markets to overseas companies. She pushed, on behalf of the government, for the Tokyo Stock Exchange to allow foreign companies to buy seats.
Following her move to the UK in the early 1990s, Judge founded Private Equity Investor, a private equity fund of funds.
She was appointed the first female chairman of the Pension Protection Fund in 2010, serving two terms. She called on the regulator to be given the power to block companies from deals that could harm pension scheme members, noting Sir Philip Green’s sale of BHS to Dominic Chappell.
Judge was appointed Chair of the Institute of Directors in 2015, but her time at the Pall Mall lobbying body ended under a cloud after a series of allegations were made against her relating to racist comments, the bullying of junior staff and governance failings. She insisted that she was innocent of the allegations, which included covert recordings of Lady Judge, but stepped down in 2018.
She married the late Sir Paul Judge in London in 2002.