Dame Julia Hoggett DBE

Julia Hoggett has spent her career crossing the boundaries between different parts of finance.

She began in banking, working across emerging markets, sovereign debt and funding before moving into regulation at the Financial Conduct Authority.

Then, in 2021, she crossed back into the market itself as CEO of the London Stock Exchange.

That combination matters.

Hoggett describes markets in unusually human terms. Her phrase – “sociology with bond maths” – captures the idea that capital markets are not simply mechanisms. They are institutions built around behaviour, confidence, incentives and trust.

At the LSE, that perspective places her at the centre of an increasingly urgent debate about UK competitiveness: how businesses access growth capital, why companies choose particular markets and what a centuries-old institution must change without losing the trust on which it depends.

Hoggett has described the exchange as a “300-year-old fintech”.

The contradiction suits a career built between preserving what works and challenging what no longer does.