Governance
The Royal Mint Museum was established as a company limited by guarantee in December 2009 and was granted charitable status in November 2010. Its sole member is HM Treasury. The Museum wholly owns a subsidiary company, Royal Mint Museum Services Limited, also established in December 2009. The heritage assets of The Royal Mint Trading Fund were vested into the Royal Mint Museum on 31 December 2009.
The Museum as a charitable company is governed by its Memorandum and Articles of Association, which provide for the appointment and reappointment of Trustees. The creation of an independent Museum was initiated to give long-term security to the collection, to establish a clear educational and charitable remit, and to enable the Museum to expand the services it offers through external funding.
The Board of Trustees have the authority to appoint new Trustees and to direct the use of the Museum’s financial and other resources. Meetings of the Trustees are attended by members of the Museum’s management team, in particular the Director of the Royal Mint Museum, and members of the financial support team, who present papers on their areas of responsibility.
The Trustees exercise oversight and supervision of all the Museum’s main functional areas, including finance, fund-raising, acquisition and disposal, the education and publication programmes, exhibitions, collections management, conservation and the activities of the Museum Services company. The Trustees decide on the strategy for the Museum. The implementation of the strategy and the operational management is delegated to the Director of the Royal Mint Museum and his colleagues.
New appointments to the board
Andrew Mills
Trustee Representative of the Royal Mint Limited, Appointed February 2024
Andrew Mills joined the Royal Mint in 2009 having previously held roles at a number of global private sector businesses (Kodak Limited, Eastman Kodak, ICI, De La Rue and Opsec Security) in sales and marketing and then general management.
He is accountable for the financial performance and strategy of the Currency Business within the Royal Mint, that includes United Kingdom circulating coin and overseas circulating coin, and chairs the Mint Directors Association Sustainability Sub-Committee.
Andrew is a member of the Royal Mint Executive team and became an executive director of the Royal Mint Limited in April 2016.
Trustees
Anna Brennand
Trustee, Appointed March 2018
Anna is Chief Executive at the Cabrach Trust in Scotland. As former Chief Executive of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, a World Heritage Site in Shropshire, Anna has a wealth of experience in multi-million pound redevelopment projects and her efforts have won several awards. A qualified accountant, Anna worked for a FTSE 100 company and also in the leisure hospitality industry and central government.
Dr Andrew Burnett CBE
Chairman, Appointed March 2016
Dr Andrew Burnett retired in 2013 from the role of Deputy Director of the British Museum. Prior to that, he worked in the Museum’s Department of Coins and Medals (1974–2003) and his books include Coinage in the Roman World and the first three volumes of Roman Provincial Coinage. He was appointed Honorary Professor at University College London in 2013 and took up a post on the Board of Trustees at the Royal Armouries in 2014.
Professor Swati Dhingra
Trustee, Appointed March 2022
Swati Dhingra is Associate Professor in Economics at LSE, and an Associate of the Centre for Economic Performance. She was recently a member of the UK’s Trade Modelling Review Expert Panel and the LSE’s Economic Diplomacy Commission. She is Research Fellow at CEPR, and on the editorial boards of Journal of International Economics and Review of Economic Studies. Her research is in international economics and industrial policy. She has published in academic journals including American Economic Review and Journal of Political Economy. Her research has been funded by ESRC, ERC, IGC, UKRI and was awarded the ONS‘s Research Excellence People’s Choice Award 2019 for “Trade and Worker Deskilling: Evidence from the Brexit Vote”.
Dafydd James
Trustee, Appointed March 2022
Dafydd is Head of Digital Experience and Services at Public Health Wales, where he leads the Digital Services Division and the implementation, delivery and evaluation of the organisation’s informatics strategy. He was previously Head of Digital Media and Technical Services at Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales, where he oversaw the conception and delivery of digital strategies for seven museums and chaired the technology group for People’s Collection Wales. Dafydd is active in a number of networks, has co-authored ongoing research that examines the state of digital maturity of cultural organisations across the globe, and has presented research and conference papers on mobile technology, digital transformation and digital ethics at conferences worldwide. He is Chair of the Museums Computer Group, a committee that hosts one of the UK’s leading museums technology conferences.
Lord Macpherson of Earl’s Court CGB
Trustee, Appointed 2015
Nick Macpherson is Chairman of Hoare’s Bank, a Director of the Scottish American Investment Trust and a Visiting Professor at King’s College, London. He trained as an economist at Oxford University and University College, London before joining the Treasury in 1985. He was Permanent Secretary for over ten years, and was Principal Private Secretary to Ken Clarke and Gordon Brown in the mid-1990s.
Unedited image courtesy of Parliment.uk
Mario Pisani
Trustee, Appointed December 2022
Mario Pisani is Senior Civil Servant at His Majesty’s Treasury, where he currently serves as Deputy Director for the Financial Stability Group. Since joining HM Treasury in 2005, Mario has worked on a range of areas including macroeconomics, public finance, international policy and communications. Between 2008 and 2011 he was Private Secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. During 2006 Mario was seconded to the Financial Times London. He is a Visiting Professor at King’s College London and sits on the Council of the Society of Professional Economists. Mario holds degrees in economics and is a qualified accountant.
Relationship with The Royal Mint
As one of the oldest continuously operating organisations in Britain, the Royal Mint is very proud of its history. In a very practical sense the history of the Royal Mint and the traditions of the British coinage are important elements in the message underpinning the sale and marketing of modern commemorative coins.
Establishing Royal Mint Museum Services as a separate company has provided the Royal Mint with a professional means through which historical knowledge and advice on the British coinage can be made available. The work undertaken by the Services company for the Royal Mint and HM Treasury is noted below.
Authoritative historical and numismatic advice.
Radio and television interviews on the history and current activities of the Royal Mint.
Provision of advice on future commemorative coins and medals.
Provision of legal advice with respect to drafting new Royal Proclamations and existing coinage legislation.
Co-ordinating responses to Ministerial questions and Freedom of Information requests.
Authentication service for coins and medals.
Managing the design and approval process for United Kingdom coins and official medals through the agency of the Royal Mint Advisory Committee
You might also like
Making Money
The basic minting process of melting, casting, blanking and striking is essentially timeless.
The Royal Mint Advisory Committee
The Committee was established in 1922 with the personal approval of George V.
William Wellesley Pole, Master of the Royal Mint 1814-1823
Pole was a man of energy, ability and influence.