Inspiring People

Mark Hayes (1956–2019)

Mark Hayes was the founder and first managing director of Shared Interest, a UK cooperative that provides financial services to Fair Trade producers worldwide. Established in 1990, today it has more than 11,500 investors investing £41m, and in the last year invested £62m in 363 organisations in 63 countries.

Mark was born to Irish parents in Toronto, where his father, a chartered engineer, was then working. He was educated at Stonyhurst college in Lancashire, and Clare College, Cambridge, where he read economics. It was here that Mark laid the foundations for his guiding thought, which was to create new models for trading.

Mark began his career as a banker in 1978 when he joined 3i, Europe’s largest venture capital organisation, and was running the Melbourne office before he was 30.