John Murphy was born in Edinburgh in 1950 and educated at George Watson’s, Cargilfield and Fettes College. He read Law at Edinburgh University and then qualified as a Scottish Chartered Accountant. In 1974 he moved to London to join Deloitte’s and then came to Italy in 1976 to join their Milan office. A year later he met Adriana and they got married in 1978. This was followed by  a three-year spell in Turin, after which he returned to Milan on the birth of son Robert. He left Deloitte’s in 1983 and moved to GTE’s Internal Audit Department in Brussels, where he found himself mainly in charge of the… Italian subsidiaries. Sara was born in the meantime.

John returned to Italy and Milan in 1986, this time to set up on his own. Or rather, he joined Buroservice, Adriana’s translation firm, helping it to specialise in financial and legal translations (www.buroservice.com). At the same time, he set up The Informer, a monthly magazine to help expats find their feet in Italy. It survived in printed form from 1987 to the end of 1999, but with the advent of the Internet, the temptation to cut the printer and the post office out of the loop was too strong, and from January 2000 The Informer went entirely on-line, where it still is many years later (www.informer.it).
 
John frequented the British Chamber from his early days in Milan (also because his boss, Richard Murray was on the Council). Not long after he returned from Brussels, he was invited onto the Membership Committee. Later he was elected as a Councillor, became a Vice President under Michael Griffiths and succeeded him as President in 1998, which he remained for four years, being awarded an OBE by the Queen in 1991. In time-honoured manner, he then became a Vice President again and with the latest change of President was asked to become an Honorary Councillor.