David Prior
Senior Adviser
Lord Prior is Deputy Chairman UK and Global Senior Advisor at Lazard.
He is also Chair of Science Capital, a venture fund aligned with Imperial College and the Institute for Cancer Research, Chair of the Cambridge Life Sciences Council, a member of the Novo Nordisk Sustainability Advisory Council and Chairman of Bit.Bio and Tangram PLC.
He was educated at Cambridge University and subsequently qualified as a barrister. He trained in finance at Lehman Brothers and Lazard Freres in New York before holding a number of senior positions within the industrial sector, including British Steel, where he was Commercial Director. He was elected MP for North Norfolk in 1997 and became CEO and Deputy Chair of the Conservative Party.
He served as Chair of Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust from 2002 – 2012 before becoming Chair of the Care Quality Commission. In 2015, he was appointed Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Health and created a Life Peer. In December 2016, he was appointed as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, with specific responsibility for developing industrial strategy. He stepped down from this role in October 2017 to become Chair of University College London Hospitals and subsequently became Chair of NHS England, a Director of Genomics England and a member of the UK Life Sciences Council.
Our offices in the United Kingdom
Lazard's first London office opened in 1877 on Old Broad Street, near the Bank of England and London's historic stock exchange, placing the firm's U.K. home at the meeting point of British capital, international trade, and the flows of finance.
The U.K. remains one of the largest operations in Lazard's global network, working closely with the firm's teams across continental Europe and the U.S., and in 2025 the firm moved its U.K. headquarters to 20 Manchester Square.
London continues to offer a single, integrated market where sovereign capital, listed companies, and global investors can flourish. From here, Lazard advises clients on a full range of strategic matters including mergers and acquisitions, restructuring and liability management, debt and capital structure, and capital raising. More than 175 years after the firm's founding, Lazard's client relationships in the U.K. still rest on a foundation of independent advice, discretion, and long-standing trust.