BBC to hand Buffini powerful commercial role as it battles funding crisis

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One of Britain’s top financiers is to be handed a powerful new role by the BBC in an attempt to grow its commercial revenues amid the threat of a real-terms cut to its funding.

Sky News has learnt that Sir Damon Buffini, who co-founded the private equity firm Permira, is being lined up to become chairman of the corporation’s commercial arm.

Sir Damon, who began a three-year term on the main BBC board earlier this month, is expected to take on the dual role in April.

The move has emerged in the same week that the government announced that the television licence fee would be frozen at £159 for two years, prompting the BBC’s director-general to warn that it would be forced into “tougher choices which will impact licence fee-payers”.

Tim Davie and Richard Sharp, the BBC chairman, said in a joint statement that the licence fee decision was “disappointing not just for licence fee payers, but also for the cultural industries who rely on the BBC for the important work they do across the UK”.

Mr Sharp, who took up his post last year, also spent his career in finance, having been a senior Goldman Sachs banker.

The BBC was plunged into a fresh political row this week when Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary, said the current licence fee settlement, which runs until 2027, would be the last.

Ms Dorries’ statement implied that an alternative funding model would need to be established prior to that date – a pronouncement that came as a shock to Mr Sharp and his colleagues.

On Wednesday, it was reported that a Cabinet backlash led by Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, against Ms Dorries’ assertion had taken place this week.