Biographies

Chief Financial Officer, BBC and Non-Executive Director, BBC Worldwide

Zarin Patel took up the role of Group Finance Director for the BBC in December 2004. Her title is now Chief Financial Officer.

She is a member of the BBC's Executive Board, reporting to Director-General, Mark Thompson.

Zarin joined the BBC in 1998 as Group Financial Controller. During her three years in that role she achieved a transformation of the organisation allowing the BBC to redirect substantial new investment into programming from overhead savings. She also reformed the BBC's financial management disciplines as part of the implementation of SAP.

In October 2001, Zarin became the BBC's Head of Revenue Management and was responsible for the collection of television licence fee income across the UK, which now totals £3.4bn. Under her leadership, evasion was brought to an all-time estimated low of 5%.

In 2004, Zarin Patel was declared 'Client Marketer of the Year' by London-based direct marketing trade magazine Precision Marketing, an accolade that recognised her skills at spearheading the marketing operation of TV Licensing.

Since becoming Chief Financial Officer at the end of 2004, she has led BBC Finance through a period of significant change, re-shaping the finance provision across the BBC, moving non-core financial services off-shore as well as implementing two major pan-BBC efficiency programmes. She has also been a key player in the BBC's strategy to outsource both core and non-core services and return signficant savings to programming.

After graduating in economics from the London School of Economics in 1982, Zarin trained as a chartered accountant with KPMG, where she gained 15 years' experience at a senior level with multi-national corporations across the industrial and commercial sectors. She has recently spent time at Harvard Business School, returning in November 2008.

Zarin is also a Governor for the University of Arts in London.