Key role for remain supporter
Lord Bilimoria frontrunner to be next CBI president
Cobra beer, Karan Bilimoria, a prominent remain supporter, is expected to take a key business lobbying role in post-Brexit Britain.
Lord Bilimoria is the frontrunner to succeed the Tesco chairman, John Allan, as president of the CBI which expects him to stand as its vice-president at its annual meeting on 18 June.
He sits in the Lords as an independent cross-bench peer, having launched Cobra beer in 1989 and remaining its chairman. He was also the founding chairman of the UK-India Business Council.
A campaigner for a second referendum, Lord Bilimoria, has compared the Brexit process to “watching a train crash in slow motion”.
He said on Sunday: “I want a resolution to this in a way that would be good for the UK and for British business.”
The President of the CBI helps to shape the organisation’s policy decisions. Carolyn Fairbairn, the organisation’s director-general, said this weekend that Lord Bilimoria’s wealth of business experience would prove invaluable for the organisation’s 190,000 members at a critical time for the country.
At a dinner at Gleneagles in April last year he called for MPs to show they had leadership skills by re-thinking Britain’s withdrawal.
