The former heads of MI6 and GCHQ, Sir John Sawers and Sir Iain Lobban, are scheduled to appear together at an exclusive dinner at the luxury five-star Gleneagles estate in Scotland.

The pair, who both left public office late last year, will address a “top-tier” audience of fund managers on the first evening of a high-profile conference sponsored by hedge funds and investment banks. Sawers is familiar with an audience of this kind, having delivered a keynote speech at a prestigious hedge fund summit in Paris in April.

The former spy chiefs last appeared together publicly in November 2013 in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations. Sitting side by side before a committee of MPs, they mounted impassioned defences of the necessity of bulk interception of communications data – controversial arguments both have continued to make since.

Since leaving office, Sawers has taken up two influential private-sector jobs and followed his predecessors at MI6, Sir John Scarlett and Sir Richard Dearlove, into a network of small, London-based private intelligence and strategic consultancy firms that advise top corporate clients, from sovereign wealth funds to blue-chip companies and foreign governments.

Three months after leaving MI6, Sawers became chairman of Macro Advisory Partners, a small consultancy with ties to former UK government figures and one of Barack Obama’s top intelligence advisers. He also joined the board of BP, a move which Lobban has since mirrored by taking on an advisory role to the board of Shell.

Fresh details about Sawers’ activities with Macro Advisory Partners emerged after the Guardian reported last week on the former intelligence chiefs’ private-sector appointments. Scrutiny of his work comes amid a contentious debate in the UK about the powers enjoyed by the security and intelligence agencies.

Sawers became MI6 chief – or “C” as insiders refer to the top job – in 2009 after receiving a tap on the shoulder from then foreign secretary, David Miliband. Shortly after departing, the Foreign Office approved the appointment on the condition Sawers would not draw on “privileged information” available to him while in office or lobby the government for two years after retiring from the agency.

According to its website, Macro Advisory Partners provides leading investors, corporations, and governments with “strategic insights”. The company was co-founded in 2013 by David Claydon, a former adviser to David Miliband and donor to his unsuccessful leadership campaign in 2010. Miliband, who now lives and works in New York, sits on the company’s advisory board.

Three months after its incorporation, the company met George Osborne’s then chief of staff, Rupert Harrison, widely seen as one of the most influential figures in government until he left after the election for a large US fund manager. The Treasury’s hospitality register records that the company took Harrison for lunch but not what was discussed.

When Macro Advisory Partners appointed Sawers, it also took on a senior intelligence figure from the US. Mona Sutphen, a partner at the company’s New York office, previously served as deputy chief of staff to Obama and sat on the Clinton administration’s national security council.

Sutphen now advises the president on US intelligence activities and the oversight of agencies such as the CIA and NSA. As one of a handful of distinguished advisors, Sutphen has “full access to the complete range of intelligence-related information”, according to the White House’s information on the role. Sutphen and Claydon both previously worked at UBS, advising on macro strategy and geopolitical risk.



Sawers has also been joined by Mike Daly, a veteran BP executive who left the oil company in 2013, while more junior staff include a former analyst at Booz Allen Hamilton, the defence and intelligence company where Snowden worked as an NSA contractor before turning whistleblower.



Neither Macro Advisory Partners or Sawers responded to the Guardian’s request to comment on potential criticisms that accepting the appointments less than a year after leaving office could present perceived conflicts of interest. A spokesman for Sawers said the appointments were “appropriately vetted and approved” by the advisory committee on business appointments.

Last week, the government published the draft investigatory powers bill, which writes into law existing surveillance activities and proposes sweeping new powers for the security and intelligence agencies. In recent days, the draft legislation has caused alarm among leading lawyers and prominent MPs including David Davis and former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg.

Sawers, who has given a range of interviews to CNN, the BBC and Financial Times over the past year, has continued to make the case that the intelligence agencies should have broad powers.

In his first speech after standing down from MI6, Sawers said: “We cannot have no go areas in our communities where the police cannot go, because that just allows space for the evil-doers to ply their trades. It is the same in the virtual world.”