London Business School

History

The Robbins Report committee recommended in the early 1960s that at least two major postgraduate business schools should be created, and the Franks Report (led by Oliver Franks) subsequently recommended that one be founded in London and one in Manchester. An industry appeal raised £5 million, with a matching grant from the government, to establish these schools. The initial plan for the London school was for it to be a joint effort between the London School of Economics and Imperial College London. However, this plan did not develop and London Business School was instead established in 1964 under the name of the London Graduate School of Business Studies. The first meeting of the board was held in November 1964, with the first dean being appointed in April 1965 and the first two professors in May 1965. The executive education programme started in February 1966 The MBA (called an MSc until 1985) also launched in 1966. Despite Franks' recommendation that the business schools should offer 12-month MBA courses, this was a 2-year course after the US model. The part-time MBA followed in 1983.

The school was incorporated as a company limited by guarantee in 1965 and became an "institution having recognised teachers" of the University of London. In 1968, the school joined the Sloan Fellows MSc programme, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, with an initial intake of 17 students. The first doctoral programme was established in 1969, with backing from the Ford Foundation.

The school was initially based in the fourth to tenth floors of 28 Northumberland Avenue while a permanent site was chosen. The first choice for a permanent site, between Bayswater and Edgware Road in central London, but this encountered opposition from London County Council and was eventually dropped. Eventually, the decision was made to lease 1–26 Sussex Place from the Crown Estate Commission. The neoclassical frontage, designed by John Nash, had to be retained, but the rest of the building was rebuilt for the school. This was completed in 1970 and opened by Queen Elizabeth II in November of that year. The new building combined accommodation and teaching facilities, allowing the school to begin running residential executive courses.

The Park Road building (now the Plowden Building), adjacent to the Sussex Place site and also leased from the Crown Estate, was redeveloped from 1977 following a capital campaign. Initial plans to demolish part of the terrace and replace it with a modernist building were dropped after opposition from the local council. Construction eventually began in 1981 with the facade along Park Road being retained, as had been done with Sussex Place, but the interior being rebuilt. It opened in 1982, with a later formal opening by Prince Charles in May 1983.

List of deans

List of the deans from 1965 to today:

Campus

The main campus is at Sussex Place in Marylebone, on the perimeter of Regent's Park. It consists of three main buildings: the Ratcliffe Building, the original main building of the school, at 1–26 Sussex Place, facing Regent's Park across the Front Lawn; the Plowden Building, backing onto the Ratcliffe Building and facing Park Road; and the North Building, at 27 Sussex Place.

The Taunton Centre is at 25 Taunton Place, around 150m West of the Plowden Building.

The school also has a teaching hub at the Sammy Ofer Centre in the Old Marylebone Town Hall.

The school does not have any halls of residence of its own in London but, as part of the University of London, students are eligible for University of London intercollegiate halls.

LBS has an international satellite campus in the Dubai International Financial Centre in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. This offers an executive MBA and executive education programmes.

Academic profile

Teaching

The school's full-time Master of Business Administration degree programme takes 15 to 21 months, and it also offers a one-year MBA for graduates with a Masters in Management or equivalent, as well as executive (part-time) MBA degrees (in London or Dubai), and a global executive MBA in partnership with Columbia Business School. The school also offers other one-year master's degrees, including the Master in Management and Master in Finance degrees and the Sloan Masters in Leadership and Strategy,

as well as a PhD programme.

Reputation, rankings and accreditation

The school's MBA was ranked sixth globally by Quacquarelli Symonds in 2026 and joint fourth globally by the Financial Times in 2026.

The school is triple accredited, with accreditation from AACSB, AMBA and EQUIS. Courses in Dubai are approved by the Dubai Knowledge and Human Development Authority and the Dubai executive MBA is licensed and accredited by the Ministry of Education of the United Arab Emirates. The school is registered as a higher education provider with its own degree awarding powers with the Office for Students in England.

Research

The school houses two research institutes: the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Private Capital and the Wheeler Institute for Business and Development. The school submitted 106 full time equivalent academics to the business and management studies panel of the 2021 Research Excellence Framework. In the Times Higher Education analysis of results from this panel, the school was ranked third in the UK for average quality of work submitted, and 15th for research power.

Notable people

Alumni

Kaveh Alamouti – CEO of Citadel LLC Asset Management Europe

Simon Borrows – CEO of 3i

Ashley Almanza – CEO of G4S

Prince Chad Al-Sherif Pasha of the Hijaz and Turkey

Nigel Andrews, 1978 – former chairman of Old Mutual Asset Management

Sir David Arculus – chairman, O2

Nicholas Ashley-Cooper, 12th Earl of Shaftesbury

Sükhbaataryn Batbold, "a degree", 1991 – former Prime Minister of Mongolia

Pablo Zalba Bidegain – Member of European Parliament (Spain)

Kumar Birla, 1992 – Chairman, Aditya Birla Group

Vice Admiral Paul Boissier – Former CB Deputy Commander-in-Chief, British Navy Maritime Forces; CEO of Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI)

Don Cowan – Former CEO and President of ABN AMRO Bank Canada

Stephen Crabb – member of the British House of Commons and former Secretary of State for Wales and for the Department for Work and Pensions

Tomáš Drucker – Minister of Education, Research, Development and Youth and Former Minister of Health, Slovakia

John Egan – Former CEO of Jaguar Cars, Former CEO of BAA, Chairman of Severn Trent plc

Philip Nevill Green – Chairman of Carillion

Academics and staff

Sir James Ball – economist

Süleyman Başak – financial economist

Sir Alan Budd – professor of economics, director of the Centre for Economic Forecasting, economic advisor for Barclays Bank, and member of the Advisory Board for Research Councils

Terence Burns, Baron Burns – Chairman of Abbey National plc, Non-Executive Chairman of Glas Cymru, and a Non-Executive Director of Pearson Group plc.

Rajesh Chandy – Professor of Entrepreneurship and Marketing.

Gary Hamel – originator (with C.K. Prahalad) of the concept of core competencies of an organization, and contributed to the theoretical development and evolution of the resource-based view

Charles Handy – former professor – London Business School, rated among Thinkers 50 – a list of the most influential living management thinkers

Michael Jacobides – Sir Donald Gordon Chair of Entrepreneurship & Innovation

Jack Mahoney – Dixons Professor of Business Ethics and Social Responsibility

Constantinos C. Markides – Robert P. Bauman Professor of Strategic Leadership

Kamalini Ramdas – Professor of Management Science and Operations and Deloitte Chair in Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Hélène Rey – Professor of Economics

Richard Portes – economist

Herminia Ibarra – Charles Handy Professor of Organizational Behavior