Paul Bainsfair

Paul’s 36 years of agency experience began at Saatchi & Saatchi where he started as an account executive and rose to being its CEO within ten years. After steering the agency through the early 90s recession and with the agency at the top of the new business league table, he left to co-found Bainsfair Sharkey Trott with John Sharkey and Dave Trott. Widely recognised as one of London’s most successful independent agencies during the 1990s, BST was eventually sold to Omnicom and merged with TBWA in 2000. He then became President TBWA Europe. In January 2009 he joined Iris, the UK’s largest independent integrated agency, first as Partner and CEO of Iris Europe and then as Chairman of Iris Worldwide. Paul studied advertising at Watford College and is a graduate of Omnicom’s Harvard Faculty Leadership Programme. He describes himself as an adman and a farmer.