City `biker' adds yet another string to his bow

Sir Adam Ridley, a keen violin player and motorbike rider, has joined the board of Leopold Joseph, the independent merchant bank.

Sir Adam is better known in the

City as chairman of the Equitas

Trust and a member of the Council of Lloyd's, as well as being deputy chairman of the National Lottery Charities Board. He was a

director of another merchant

bank, Hambros Bank, from

1985 to 1997. Sir Adam, 55, was

a special adviser to two Chancellors

of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson and

Sir Geoffrey Howe, and an economist

at the central Policy Review Staff at No 10 Downing Street and at the Treasury. Educated at Eton and Oxford, Sir Adam has been chairman of Strauss Turnbull and a director of the `Sunday Correspondent', as well as leading a host of other initiatives.