The Competitive Edge Trinity graduate John Fingleton was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the New Year’s Honours List. The former chairman of the Irish Competition Authority and chief executive of the UK’s Office of Fair Trading is now founder CEO of his own business consultancy firm, Fingleton. We catch up to talk Trinity, dyslexia, regulation and Brexit J ohn Fingleton is used to jumping in at the deep end: when the job of chairman of the Competition Authority in Ireland came up in 2000, he was a 34 year old lecturer in Trinity’s Department of Economics – ‘I knew nothing about running anything, but I had strong views on competition in Ireland and I thought it needed to be shaken up, so I went for it, and to everybody’s surprise, including my own, I got it.’ Five years later, when he was appointed Chief Executive of the Office of Fair Trading in the UK, it was an even bigger leap – ‘I went from leading an office of fifty people to one of 750 people, with responsibility not only for competition but for consumer protection and regulating the credit market.’
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