Contact Mark Bishop
- Email: Mark.Bishop@cranfield.ac.uk
Background
Mark Bishop is an alumnus of the Cranfield Executive MBA (2011-12) who has worked as a journalist, media company executive, strategy consultant and corporate finance adviser. He has also authored a book about private equity.
Mark developed an interest in corporate ethics, regulation and whistleblowing during his MBA when he discovered evidence that a high-profile collective investment scheme had become insolvent because of fraudulent activity. He co-founded and led an online action group representing consumers' interests and worked with stakeholders such as the Financial Conduct Authority, the Police, insolvency practitioners, politicians and others to discover what happened, lobby for the victims to receive redress (>£82m secured to date) and the wrong-doers to be punished and help the industry learn from failings identified.
Describing himself as 'a reluctant corporate sustainability campaigner', Mark has developed a toolkit aimed at reducing corporate misconduct by providing better alignment of interests between managers, workers, shareholders, customers, suppliers, government and society. These tools draw heavily on concepts subjects covered on the Cranfield MBA, including principal-agent problems, corporate governance, game theory, behavioural economics and situational leadership.
Current activities
Mark is a Partner in and co-founder of The Management Buy-Out Centre LLP (www.mbocentre.com), which enables managements to pursue company buy-outs and buy-ins by securing for them financial backing from private equity firms. He also writes about personal finance and self-manages an equity portfolio.
At Cranfield, Mark has taught on the Managing Corporate Sustainability module within the Masters in Management. He focuses on how organisations' cultures and governance structures can be optimised to reduce the risk of individuals harnessing the power of such institutions to commit misconduct. He sits on the Advisory Board of the MBA programme at University of Sussex Business School, his first degree being from Sussex.