My name is Earl

Peter Earl is a man who thrives on huge challenges, and his trailblazing credentials aren’t in doubt. He has previously led charity sponsors to Everest Base Camp (the famous trek taking explorers into the heart of the Nepalese Himalaya), climbed Vinson Massif, the largest mountain in Antarctica, and tackled Bolivia’s third highest mountain.
Other claims to fame include work for the World Bank and the UN, introducing Richard Branson to his airline hero Freddie Laker, and lately mergers and acquisitions work in the power sector. Followers of small companies will recognise him from AIM vehicle Rurelec, where his efforts are bringing much-needed power to emerging parts of South America.

Oxford to Boston
‘I was a child of the 1970s,’ says Earl, who went from Oxford to Harvard on a Kennedy scholarship (where he sometimes taught Greek), before a switch to economics prepared him for later financial and corporate machinations. From Harvard he was recruited into the Boston Consulting Group, where he kick-started his career advising state-owned companies.

His travels eventually led him to the hot seat in New York at The Carter Center, which is committed to promoting human rights, where in 1994 he acted on a temporary assignment to the World Bank and a United Nations Development Programme in Bolivia. These links at the loftiest levels of the UN put him in the powerful position of being able to advise governments on privatisations in Latin America and Eastern Europe.

Earl’s varied career has seen him tangle with true corporate heavyweights: ‘I actually did the rescue of Laker Airways’ – the airline started by Laker that pioneered the idea of budget flights. ‘We raised the money to recapitalise Laker in the early 1980s, and even Tiny Rowland got involved. During the refinancing I introduced Laker to Richard Branson, who had done ten per cent of the underwriting. Freddie was his big hero,’ recalls Earl. Virgin Atlantic went on to name one of its planes Spirit of Sir Freddie as a mark of respect for Laker, who sadly passed away earlier this year.

Earl eventually ‘switched to mergers and acquisitions work before the big bang hit,’ becoming a director of Fieldstone Private Capital, ‘one of the first US investment banks to come to London,’ where he advised on cross-border acquisitions in the power sector.

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