Peter Wallis

Peter Wallis, AKA Peter York

Peter Wallis is the real name of 'style guru' Peter York. Wallis is well connected to New Labour and corporate elites. His SRU consultancy set up with Dennis Stevenson in the early 1970s is now owned by Brunswick Group.

A biographical note on the Marketing Society website lists some of his connections, including close links with New Labour uber-lobbyist Dennis Stevenson:

Peter York (Peter Wallis), Chairman - Department of Trade & Industry. Peter Wallis has two parallel careers - as a management consultant and an author/broadcaster - and two names.

As Peter Wallis he was the co-founder, with Lord Stevenson CBE (now Chairman of Pearson Plc, Halifax plc and The Appointments Commission) of the management consultancy SRU Ltd, and during the 1980s developed the SRU Group of nine specialist business consultancies.

In addition to a wide ranging experience advising major corporates, Government Departments and institutions in many sectors, Peter Wallis' particular specialism has been the commercial exploitation of cultural change and 'brand rehabilitation' - the redevelopment of brands and businesses that have lost positioning focus.

He has very considerable experience of 'elite' and up-market products and their branding communication strategies, from Dunhill to Waterford and including Harpers & Queen, World of Interiors, The Economist, The Financial Times, Jaegar, Tiffany, Mont Blanc, Liberty and private banker Coutts & Co.

From 1987-1999 he was Chairman of the Media Consultancy Hydra Associates.

His experience of the financial services sector includes:

• investment banks
• corporate brokering
• private client stockbrokers
• high street retail banks
• building societies
• insurance businesses including pension specialists and health insurers
• extensive Investor Relations research on behalf of his clients.

In March 1994 Peter Wallis was appointed Chairman of a Department of Trade and Industry Committee examining the future of leisure in the UK as part of the British Government's 'Foresight' initiative.

Peter is a member of Lord Puttnam's DfE Task Force to help recruit, re-moralise and retain teachers in primary and secondary education.

He is also a member of the Britain Abroad Task Force to review the communication of the British 'brand' overseas.

He is on the Members Council of the Tate Gallery.

Peter Wallis is also a non-executive director of MFI Plc, the national furniture chain, and is Chairman of the St. Marylebone Society.

Under his other name of Peter York , author, broadcaster and journalist, he is known as a commentator on 'lifestyle' and social change:

• he was Style Editor of Harpers and Queen for ten years
• the Sloane Ranger Handbook - which he co-authored with Ann Barr - was the UK's biggest-selling trade book of the 1980s
• he has written five other books on social/style/social change
• he was the writer and presenter of Peter York's 80s, a six part BBC series with an accompanying BBC book.
• he was a member of the Channel 4 'Power Commission' which nominated the 300 most powerful people in the UK in 1998, 1999 and 2000 and appeared in The Channel 4 programme 'The Power List'

and

• he is a columnist for The Independent on Sunday, GQ and Management Today
• he writes and broadcasts for a variety of other media outlets.