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Born in Reading in 1955, I attended Reading
School which, at that time, was a Grammar School and which is still one of
the best-performing secondary schools in the country, albeit operating a
highly selective policy. I took German, French and English at A Level and was
lucky enough to get a place at New College, Oxford to read Modern Languages.
I opted for a four-year course which included a year in Hannover, where some
of the best German is said to be spoken; I still speak very fluent German
but my French is a tad rusty.
In 1978 I
joined NatWest in Windsor, which is where I met my wife, Liz (see
Family). I
then 'learned the ropes' of retail banking in a number of branches (Slough
Trading Estate being a particular 'highlight'!) before the bank finally
remembered that I spoke German and moved me to the Swiss desk in what was
then the NatWest Tower. Liz and I married in 1982, just after she qualified
as a dentist, and in 1984-5 I was successful in my application to spend a
year at the bank's Swiss subsidiary in Zürich, a year which was great for
improving our skiing and for learning about the world of private banking and
asset management. We returned to the UK just in time for my 30th
birthday, in celebration of which Bob Geldof kindly organised Live Aid.
I then decided to make a move from banking,
although staying within the Financial Services industry as a consultant with
a company marketing treasury software to banks. This was followed by a
period as Head of Systems for a bank in the City and then three years
implementing systems across Europe for an Austrian bank. I then spent three
years at Unisys, implementing systems across the world before moving to
Capgemini, where I stayed for seven years, progressing to the level of Associate
Director. Whilst there I was instrumental in building up their Euro service
offer from scratch and wrote two books on what companies needed to do to
prepare for the advent of the single currency. This period saw me on radio
and TV on many occasions, as the company spokesman on the subject, the
'highlight' being an interview on the Today programme on BBC's Radio
4, a very scary event. When Capgemini
suffered from the downturn in the wake of September 11, I applied for their
generous offer of voluntary redundancy in order to set up my own consultancy
business. Since then I have focussed on operational risk, communications and
systems implementation and you can find out more about this by clicking on
Services on the menu to the left.
If you would like to download a copy of my full
CV, click here.
In addition to my MA from Oxford, I passed my
banking examinations in 1982 and in 2005 I was elected to be a Fellow of the
Chartered Institute of Bankers for services to the Financial Services
industry.
I am a Fellow of the RSA (Royal Society for the
encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) and an Affiliate Member of
the Institute of Risk Management (IRM) as well as being a member of the
Professional Risk Managers' International association (PRMIA). |
