Adam Ridley

Sir Adam Nicholas Ridley (born 14 May 1942) is a British economist, civil servant, and banker.

He was a Special Advisor to the Chancellors of the Exchequer between 1979 and 1984 and later a director of Hambros Bank, of Morgan Stanley, and of several Equitas insurance companies.

The son of Jasper Maurice Alexander Ridley (1913–1944), by his marriage to Helen Cressida Bonham Carter, a daughter of Sir Maurice Bonham Carter and Violet Asquith (herself a daughter of the British prime minister H. H. Asquith), Ridley lost his father during the Second World War. His grandfather, Sir Jasper Nicholas Ridley (1887–1951), was the younger son of Matthew White Ridley, 1st Viscount Ridley, Home Secretary in Lord Salisbury's government from 1895 to 1900, while his paternal grandmother was Nathalie von Benckendorff, a daughter of Count Alexander Benckendorff, Russian Ambassador to the Court of St James's between 1903 and 1917.

Ridley was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, where he took first class honours in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics in 1965.

He is a first cousin of the actress Helena Bonham Carter and a more distant cousin of the Conservative cabinet minister Nicholas Ridley and the historian Jane Ridley.