Lord Stevenson has been courageous in coming out so openly about his battle over two decades with depression.
In the early 1990s he took over from me as chairman of the chamber orchestra that I’d founded, Docklands Sinfonietta (later Sinfonia 21). At a handover lunch we had together, I asked his advice about taking on non-executive directorships.
He told me that the major issue, as he saw it, was that one was in a situation one would not fully understand (as the professional executive directors in the industry would), yet one carried exactly the same legal and financial risks as them.
Perhaps he forgot his own counsel when he took on the role of chairman of one of Britain’s largest financial institutions, HBOS. He certainly could not rely on depth of experience as a banker when the business floundered.
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