Mr Ross is understood to have seen off competition for the chairmanship role last year from George Osborne, the former chancellor. Lady Heywood, widow of the former Cabinet secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood, is deputy chair of the ROH's board of trustees. The ROH's board includes an array of prominent figures from the arts and business worlds, including Sir John Kingman, the former Treasury mandarin, the former BP chief executive Lord Browne, and Sir Lloyd Dorfman, the Travelex founder.
Sir Simon Robey, a former chairman of the ROH and now its honorary vice-president, is expected to step in as interim chair pending the appointment of a long-term replacement, insiders added. Officials at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) have been briefed on the situation with the ROH board but will not be directly involved in the search for Mr Ross's successor. "It was key to stabilising the ROH's funding," the source said. Mr Ross paid a reported £12.8m, including fees, for the painting, which he immediately loaned back to the ROH to continue hanging there.Ī source close to him said he had stepped in to preserve the portrait in British ownership and had promised to keep it on public display. Last November, the businessman stepped in to shore up the Opera House's finances by purchasing David Hockney's portrait of the late Sir David Webster, the institution's former chief executive.
The ROH is funded by an annual grant from Arts Council England as well as from ticket sales and private donations - an area where Mr Ross has a track record as a prolific fundraiser. His imminent Royal Opera House exit has baffled arts industry figures during a period when it has been forced to rely on an emergency loan from the government's Arts Recovery Fund to see it through the COVID-19 crisis. Image: The Royal Opera House is now looking for a successor to David Ross
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