Tracy Blackwell, boss of the Pension Insurance Corporation, has worked her way from up Baskin-Robbins and survived a shipwreck disaster (for her possessions), to lead a company set to work closely with the new chancellor

Shortly before Christmas 1997, Tracy Blackwell found herself in New York with nothing but two suitcases and the sinking feeling that she would have to make another fresh start. At 30, she had just moved there from London with her employer, Goldman Sachs. And while she safely made it stateside, a transatlantic cargo ship had capsized off the Azores, taking all her worldly possessions with it.

“You can look back and laugh, but at the time … you don’t know where to start,” Blackwell says. But the US native was more than up to starting from scratch. Back in the UK since the early years of this century, she has risen to chief executive of the London-based Pension Insurance Corporation (PIC), a City firm that helps companies offload the risks of their final salary pension schemes.