Trade secretary Dr Liam Fox has been accused by Labour of creating "potential conflicts of interest" after an investment adviser he once described as his "political soulmate" was appointed to the board of the Department for International Trade.

Dr Pippa Malmgren, a former adviser to George W Bush, was announced as a non-executive director to the department's board, which sat for the first time last Thursday, earlier this month.

Labour deputy leader Tom Watson criticised the appointment of Malmgren, saying her close friendship with Fox and outside business interests raised serious concerns. Fox was previously forced to resign from the cabinet over his friendship with lobbyist Adam Werrity, who accompanied him on official foreign trips.

Malmgren is the founder and co-owner of DRPM Group, an investment advisory company whose clients include "many investment banks, fund managers and hedge funds as well as Sovereign Wealth Funds, pension funds, global corporations and family offices”, according to the company's website.

Another page states that DRPM helps "investors anticipate how risk and prices will move across the economic landscape and, when appropriate, recommend[s] specific investment themes that help our clients profitably capture coming price movements".

Malmgren's appointment to the board of the Department for International Trade was announced alongside three others by Fox earlier in November. The role of Malmgren and the other board members, according to the announcement, is to "work closely with the Secretary of State and ministerial team to assist the new department in delivering an effective long-term strategy for the UK’s trade policy".

Board members are governed by strict civil service rules on impartiality that require them to act "solely in terms of the public interest" and "declare and resolve any interests and relationships".

Malmgren also has a longstanding friendship with Fox, who provided a promotional quote for her book and introduced her at a public event earlier in 2015 as his "political soulmate".

"It’s my great pleasure tonight – and I usually say that but don’t always mean it but tonight I can actually say it and mean it – to have my great friend, collaborator, and political soulmate Dr Pippa Malmgren with us," Fox told attendees at the Henry Jackson society.

"I usually say when I’m speaking that I regard myself as an unreconstructed Thatcherite, free-marketeer, unionist, Eurosceptic Atlanticist. Of course, she’s not British [so] she can’t say unionist, but she’s certainly every one of those others!"



Fox also took the opportunity to praise Malmgren's book Signals.

"I had the pleasure of being able to read this in advance while we were sitting by the swimming pool on holiday last year, and I have to say that I think it is – as I said in one of the reviews – I think this is a groundbreaking book," he said.

