John Chisholm

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John Chisholm

Sir John Chisholm, FREng (born August 1946) is the Executive Chairman and former Chief Executive of QinetiQ.

He attended Cambridge University on a scholarship from General Motors. After completing his studies, he worked at GM, and later at BP's computer-consultancy firm Scicon before forming a software company called CAP Scientific Ltd in 1979. CAP was sold in 1988 to Sema, a French company.

In 1991, Chisholm was asked by the UK Ministry of Defence to organize a number of their research organisations into a single entity, which eventually became the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA). In July 2001, three quarters of DERA was spun off to form a new private company called QinetiQ. In late 2005 Chisholm became Executive Chairman of QinetiQ, being replaced as CEO by Graham Love. According to The Sunday Times his annual pay was £467,000 in 2004. QinetiQ's financial reports show him to have a substantial shareholding in the QinetiQ group.

Chisholm was a founding member of the British Government's Technology Foresight programme, and has been President of the Electrical Engineering Association. He is currently (2005-2006) President of the Institution of Electrical Engineers. He was knighted in 1999.