Finance firm recruited former aide first

BLACKROCK hired George Osborne after giving a job to his former chief of staff.

Rupert Harrison was handed a role with the investment firm on a six-figure salary in 2015. The 38-year-old has been credited as the ‘architect of the Government’s pension reforms’ that benefited firms including BlackRock.

At his leaving party, Mr Osborne joked: ‘It has been an honour to play a role in the Harrison chancellorship.’ After recruiting the aide, BlackRock boasted: ‘Given his experience shaping the recent pensions reforms in the UK, he is uniquely placed to help develop our retirement proposition.’

Mr Harrison, a former head boy of Eton, worked for the Institute for Fiscal Studies think-tank before joining Mr Osborne’s staff in 2009. David Cameron made him a CBE in his 2015 honours list.

City headhunters said his base salary at BlackRock could be up to £150,000, with a discretionary bonus. His annual pay packet when he left government was £95,000.

On Friday after Mr Osborne’s new job at BlackRock was announced, Mr Harrison tweeted: ‘So, I have a new adviser.’

In his 2014 budget, Mr Osborne announced changes that mean workers are no longer required to use their pension pot to buy an annuity as a retirement income.

The following month BlackRock’s president, Robert Kapito, told investors up to $25billion a year of pension savings was now ‘money in motion’ as a result.

He added: ‘BlackRock is uniquely positioned because of our multi-asset strategies and our product development tailored to the retirement area. We intend to put together more retirement products to capitalise on this market.’

The Financial Times reported the comments, claiming the firm was planning ‘to swoop into Britain’s pensions market mounting an aggressive challenge to UK life insurers after concluding that government reforms could lead to the collapse of the annuities market’.

It said such firms had in effect been barred until the budget reforms.