Stephen Hester profile: Countryside passions in personal life

By David Maddox
Published on Saturday 28 January 2012 03:25

STEPHEN Hester grew up in relatively humble circumstances in Yorkshire, where he attended a comprehensive school before going to Oxford University, but now enjoys the high life of a top executive in the financial world.

His portfolio of properties, which he owns with his estranged wife Barbara Abt, includes the opulent Broughton Grange in Oxfordshire, which is famous for its gardens in the 350-acre estate.

The gardens are said to be one of Mr Hester’s passions – he is also a trustee at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

He hired landscape designer Tom Stuart-Smith to develop its arboretum, which includes pleached limes, formal beds and five of the first batch of Australian Wollemi pines to be brought into the UK after the tree, thought extinct, was rediscovered in the 1990s. Mr Hester also owns a house in the wealthy Holland Park area of London as well as a chalet in Switzerland.

However, as well as taking on one of the toughest jobs in banking, he has had challenges in his personal life, with his marriage to fellow banker Barbara Abt, the mother of his two children, breaking up in June 2010.

The two met at Credit Suisse, where Mr Hester began his career in 1982. In 2009 he said one of things that kept their 20-year marriage together was a shared passion for horse riding and hunting.

Related Articles

• David Cameron refuses to act over Stephen Hester’s ‘bewildering’ bonus

  THE UK government last night appeared to wash its hands of the bonus of almost £1 million awarded to RBS chief executive Stephen Hester, despite a clamour for ministers to intervene and block the award.

  26 Comments