My wife, Catharine French, who has died aged 53, from cancer, was a quiet trailblazer for the rights of women in the City of London, an internal advocate for customers' rights and a supporter of financial inclusion.
The daughter of archaeologists, Elizabeth (nee Wace) and David French, Catharine was brought up in Greece and Turkey before returning to a still quasi-Victorian boarding school education at Cheltenham Ladies College. She was amazed to discover that olive oil could only be bought at chemists, and nobody had seen an avocado. After leaving Oxford University, she became one of the first female graduate trainees at the stockbroker Cazenove and Co, which previously only admitted male aristocrats and founding family members, and where women were graded daily not on their performance, but on their clothing.
