In October 2008 he was elevated to the House of Lords as a life peer and was appointed City Minister in the Labour Government of Gordon Brown, serving until May 2010.

Subsequently, he held a number of high-profile business roles, including as chairman of Gartmore Group, Land Securities and Marks & Spencer.

[6] After serving on the Rothschild board of directors from 1977 to 1985, Myners moved to pension fund manager Gartmore Group as chief executive and was appointed chairman in 1987.

[7] After retiring from Gartmore in 2000, he chose to focus on a wider range of interests, acting as non-executive director and chairman of a number of companies and third sector institutions.

[8] Myners was appointed interim chairman of retailer Marks & Spencer in 2004 in the midst of a takeover battle with Phillip Green's Arcadia Group,[9] leaving the position two years later in 2006 after successfully resisting the hostile merger attempt.

This report gave rise to the Myners Principles which formed the basis for good stewardship of the investment of pension funds and endowments.

[15] Although never active in politics before his appointment as a finance minister, The Independent reported that "a Labour Cabinet insider" said of him that "for a City grandee he has a genuine instinct for social justice.

[citation needed] In February 2009 Lord Myners was at the centre of controversy concerning the amount of pension paid to Fred Goodwin, the former chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland.

[17] The Treasury Committee concluded in their report that "…it would have been far better if Lord Myners had given a stronger, clearer direction of Government requirements for a bank in receipt of public funds and had assured himself by demanding to be kept informed of the detailed negotiations that were taking place….

The respected commentator Hugo Dixon wrote in the Daily Telegraph and the Breaking Views website that the committee should have got ‘a sense of proportion’.

He wrote that during the same weekend of the Goodwin pension issue Myners and two Treasury Civil Servants – John Kingman and Tom Scholar – ‘managed to pull off a remarkable feat in pretty much every way.

[24][25] In March 2013, Lord Myners joined the board of OJSC MegaFon, a London-listed company that is one of the three largest mobile operators in Russia.

[33] On 1 February 2015 Lord Myners was appointed Chair of the Court of Governors and Council of the London School of Economics and Political Science, succeeding Peter Sutherland.

[37] He was first married to Tessa Stanford-Smith, a school teacher, from 1972 to 1993, and then to Alison Macleod, former chair of the Contemporary Art Society and trustee of The Royal Academy Development Trust.

[4][39] Myners died at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London, on 16 January 2022, at the age of 73 after a fall at home and then contracting COVID-19 during the COVID-19 pandemic in England.