Nicknamed Rona Airhead, she rose (then fell) without trace

RONA Fairhead’s meteoric career – spending 30 years shattering corporate glass ceilings before becoming the BBC’s first female chairman – has been dogged by controversy.

At the Financial Times, where she was chairman and chief executive, some disgruntled male journalists nicknamed her ‘Rona Airhead’ because they believed she owed her job to a policy of gender-based tokenism rather than talent.

Born in Cumbria to a maths teacher and an atomic physicist, the 55-year-old is married to wealthy merchant banker Tom Fairhead, who is a former councillor and senior figure in Tory circles.

Mrs Fairhead’s links to the Tory establishment led her to becoming a ‘business ambassador’ for then-PM David Cameron.

She also sat on the Cabinet Office board alongside Sir Jeremy Heywood, Britain’s top civil servant – who just happened to be the most senior member of the selection board which interviewed her for the BBC chairman role.

A tenacious professional who cut her teeth as a management consultant, the mother-of-three battled breast cancer while a director of PepsiCo and HSBC.

She has a stellar academic background – a double first in law from St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, as well as an MBA from Harvard – and was appointed CBE in 2012.

She joined the Financial Times as chief financial officer in 2002 but left in 2013 after failing to be appointed as successor to her mentor Dame Marjorie Scardino.

Although Mrs Fairhead’s decision to leave the FT was voluntary, she got a payoff of £1.1million and was allowed to keep millions more in share options.

That prompted a shareholder rebellion which saw 37 per cent refuse to endorse the FT’s owner Pearson’s remuneration report. Last year, she quit as a director of HSBC in a boardroom reshuffle which followed a row over her handling of a tax evasion scandal at the lender’s Swiss operations.

She was branded either ‘incredibly naive or totally incompetent’ by Margaret Hodge, then chairman of the Commons public accounts committee, in a humiliating appearance in front of MPs.

Mrs Fairhead, who is a qualified pilot, describes her hobbies in Debrett’s as ‘skiing, scuba diving, flying and family’. She rents a weekend cottage in the grounds of Highclere Castle – location of ITV’s Downton Abbey – which is owned by her friend Lady Carnarvon.

Discussing her first days at the BBC, she said she ‘came in expecting to see lots of fat, but you go to the EastEnders site and they are buying props from charity shops’.

Not that this renowned business ‘wheelerdealer and number cruncher’ will ever need herself to shop in second-hand stores.