Job Title : LCH.Clearnet

Organization : Group CIO

Martin Taylor took on the group CIO role at clearing-house LCH.Clearnet at the start of last year, after filling the interim post for six months, and has been responsible for re-establishing the reliability, security and stability of the organisation’s IT.

The common theme to his career is taking on a challenge where IT has lost its way or is in need of a major change of direction. He’s a real heavy hitter whose skill is refocusing and energising wayward IT departments.

Taylor does not have a typical tech background – he’s an arts graduate with a masters in English Literature. He started his varied IT career at British Airways in 1976 and then spent a decade at Mars during the 1980s – including a stint on its legendary management training scheme, and a year in the US – where he drove materials resource planning-enabled change at the company’s US manufacturing plants.

Back in the UK Taylor joined Courtalds as group CIO, reducing UK costs and standardising its IT infrastructure in the Far East. In 1996 he became group CIO at EMI, where he took the music company through the Y2K project and led early forays into the internet and digital downloads.

Taylor took time out from being a CIO in 2001 for a mixture of work that included personal investment, consulting to Microsoft founder Paul Allen’s European private equity business, and a non-executive position on the UK government’s police and security IT boards.

He then returned to the FTSE100 in 2003 as group CIO for telco Cable & Wireless to help turn around the business by in-sourcing the IT from IBM, exiting the US, overhauling its UK IT infrastructure and in-sourcing international billing for radical cost reduction.

In his spare time, he is a keen sailor and he has also been a volunteer lifeboat man with the Thames crew.