Ian is the founder of the plc awards. Throughout his career, Ian has been involved in the quoted growth companies sector. His early career was as a stockbroker, analyst, broadcaster and financial journalist in this area and, since founding Design Portfolio in 1991 (where he is currently Executive Chairman), he has been active in helping many companies with their investor communication and corporate reporting requirements. Ian is also Chairman of Flathill Communications Group plc, President of The Design Portfolio Marketing Services Inc. and a member of the Investor Relations Society.

Mike is an experienced analyst with c.20 years of buy side and sell side experience, having worked at UBS Global Asset Management, Numis Securities, and Panmure Gordon. In his current role, Mike is a Board Member and Head of Research at Zeus Capital, an independent investment banking boutique, providing the highest quality advice to clients across a range of sectors and transactions across both public and private equity markets. During his career Mike has been rated as a top three analyst in the business services sector in the Extel Survey and has also won numerous stock picking awards with Starmine.

Kit is Head of IPO Execution with responsibility for originating and executing initial public offerings with a particular focus on significant, innovative or wide-ranging appointments. Kit has more than 20 years’ experience in the equities industry, working in UK equity capital markets since 2005, during which time he has been responsible for the operational execution of some of the highest profile and largest fundraising corporate transactions in the UK. Prior to joining Link, Kit spent twelve years working for J.P. Morgan Cazenove.

Matthew works for UBS's wealth management division, based in Zurich since 2016, as a Relationship Manager, running a team focused on international private clients. He has spent over fourteen years in the financial sector, mostly in the City of London. He started his career in London as a Financial Planner and spent several years as an Investment Consultant running advisory portfolios. He is passionate about the financial markets and building and maintaining long-term relationships, focusing on C-Suite executives and entrepreneurs.

He studied Civil Engineering at the University of Liverpool, is RDR Level 6 qualified and has the Investment Management Certificate through the CFA Society.

Matt works on the Emerging Companies team at BlackRock and is focused on running UK small and mid-cap portfolios. He started at the firm as a graduate in 2013. Prior to working at BlackRock, he earned an MSc in Finance from the LSE and a BA in History from the University of Oxford.

Georgina, Managing Director, is a Senior Portfolio Manager for small and mid-cap funds within the J.P. Morgan Asset Management European Equity Group. She is the Fund Manager for the JPM Life UK Small Cap Fund, the JPM UK Smaller Companies Fund and the J.P. Morgan Smaller Companies Investment Trust and Co-Manager for the J.P. Morgan Mid-Cap Investment Trust. She is also a Co‑Manager for J.P. Morgan’s range of European small-cap funds. An employee since 1995, Georgina was previously an Analyst in the UK Research department. Georgina obtained an MA in Classics from Oxford University, and earned a Diploma in Law from City University, London. She is a qualified barrister.

Andy is Co-Head of the Schroders Pan-European Small and Mid-Cap team. His investment career commenced in 1987 when he joined Schroders as a UK Equity Fund Manager, becoming Co-Head of the UK Small-Cap team in 2002.

He joined Price Waterhouse in 1985, where he qualified as a Chartered Accountant.

Andy has a degree in Economics.

For over 24 years, Andy was one of the UK's best known UK small-cap fund managers. In 2011 he moved to the sell side in a corporate financial advisory and executive role, initially at Peel Hunt, and from April 2015 as Managing Director of Stockdale Securities, working with the Chairman, Mark Brown, to turn the business around. This process ended with a successful sale to Shore Capital in early 2019. With the businesses successfully integrated and all the corporate clients successfully transferred, Andy stepped away from full time broking in order to concentrate on part time positions.

Julian joined Liberum on its foundation in 2007 and has led the UK Mid and Small-Cap Equity Sales team since 2013.

He joined from Cazenove, where he spent eleven years in a variety of sales roles in London and New York.

James is COO at PrimaryBid. He has over 22 years’ experience in UK equity capital markets. Most of this time was with J.P. Morgan Cazenove, running UK Mid-Cap Equities, and then in UK Corporate Finance. Prior to this, James was a Director at Numis Securities, a founding employee of Evolution Securities and originally with Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein in UK small-cap sales.

Laura is a Portfolio Manager on the Global Equity Income team at Janus Henderson Investors, a position she has held since 2014. Laura co-manages alongside James Henderson three UK-focused investment trusts and one open-ended fund, totalling £1.6bn as at the end of September 2019. Laura is also a regular market commentator on BBC Radio 5’s “Wake Up to Money” and BBC Radio 4’s “Today Programme”.

Arun has over 14 years’ experience covering the technology sector. During this time, he has worked with technology start-ups and as an equity analyst in investment banks and independent research firms. He is currently the Managing Director and Co-Founder of Global Equity Research. He was formerly a Technology Analyst for Canaccord Genuity, Altium Securities, Espirito Santo Investment Bank, Noble Group and Clear Capital. He has a Dual Master’s in Financial Engineering and Industrial and Operations Engineering from the University of Michigan. He obtained his Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. He is also a CFA charterholder.

Abby joined the UK Smaller Companies team in January 2016 and is responsible for ASI UK Mid Cap, ASI UK Opportunities and Aberdeen Smaller Companies Income Trust. Abby has been at Standard Life Investments since February 2013, on the UK Larger Companies team, where she ran funds with a variety of UK Equity mandates, and had sector responsibilities including Technology, Non-Life Insurance and Healthcare. She has over eight years’ industry experience, all of which has been spent covering UK Equities. Previously she worked on the UK Equities team at Kames Capital, which she joined as a graduate in 2007. Abby has a First Class Joint Honours degree in Economics and Finance from the University of Aberdeen.

Alex is Head of Sales at N+1 Singer, having joined the firm in 2012. He has spent his 23 years in the City supporting and advising growth companies and their interactions with institutional investors including the completion of many successful IPOs and secondary fundraisings. He has been ranked in the top three for small-cap equity sales by Extel.

Tom joined the London Stock Exchange in March 2017 and is Head of Issuer Services. Since he joined he has been responsible for delivering the Issuer Services platform for all listed and quoted issuers. The Platform is focused on connecting issuers with data, services, content and investors. Through the platform, issuers can now broadcast financial results live and on demand through their London Stock Exchange profile pages. 

Tom has over 10 years' experience working in capital markets both in the ECM team at Citi and as a solicitor at Ashurst. Tom also spent some time working at a fintech start up helping them understand public capital markets transactions. During this time Tom pioneered a new approach to offering equity to retail investors. 

Hannah leads the Squire Patton Boggs Corporate Practice in Leeds and is a partner in the Equity Capital Markets team. She has a wide range of experience advising public companies on mergers and acquisitions, fundraisings, takeovers, restructurings and reorganisations. 

Her work varies between UK and cross border and she works closely with executives, in-house legal teams and general counsel both in the UK and globally. 

Hannah is also a member of the Regional Advisory Group of the London Stock Exchange plc for the North East. 

Marian heads MacBryde Consulting. She was a joint founder of capital markets advisory business Makinson Cowell and a Director of the company for 30 years. Prior to that she spent seven years at Hoare Govett as a broker’s analyst. She has advised listed companies in the UK, France and Germany on all aspects of their relationships with international investors and spreads her time between New York, the home of the world’s largest capital markets, and Europe.

Anna is a Fund Manager with Amati Global Investors, an Edinburgh-based specialist in UK mid and smaller companies running an OEIC, AIM VCT and IHT portfolio service. She has 15 years’ investment management experience and is a CFA charterholder. She graduated from the London School of Economics and began her career as an Investment Manager and Analyst at Henderson Global Investors. After spending time in Kenya, working for Old Mutual Asset Management in Nairobi, she returned to London and Threadneedle Investors. She was Head of Research for Adam and Company before joining Amati in early 2018.

Andrew is Head of Investec’s Listed Client Group, responsible for the bank’s portfolio of investment banking services for public companies. He joined Investec in 2007 as an equity salesman in the technology sector before progressing to general small and mid-cap sales and latterly running the UK small and mid-cap sales desk.  Prior to Investec, Andrew spent 13 years with IT services and software specialist Detica plc, where he set up and ran the company’s TMT business, focusing on big data and analytics. Andrew holds a PhD in Semiconductor Physics, undertaken at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Physics in Stuttgart. He usually spends his weekends driving his children to netball and hockey matches and, on rare weekends off, races an old Porsche in UK club motorsport events.

Richard joined CRUX Asset Management in June 2018 from Legal & General Investment Management. Richard has been Fund Manager of the FP CRUX UK Special Situations Fund since it launched in October 2018. Richard had worked at LGIM for 15 years, where he had managed the award-winning L&G UK Alpha Trust and L&G UK Special Situations Trust, as well as several segregated mandates. Richard has a Master’s degree in Engineering and Economics from Oxford University.

Adrian is Senior Adviser, Green Finance, London Stock Exchange Group. Having spent the last decade at the forefront of sustainable investment, Adrian is currently leading a programme to scale up sustainable finance and ESG disclosure across London Stock Exchange Group’s capital markets, which to date has resulted in the launch of: a Green Economy classification across its markets; a new Sustainable Bond Market; an ESG disclosure benchmarking tool for companies; and the publication of a guide to green finance.

Adrian established ABN AMRO’s Environmental Markets business in 2006 and later supported renewable energy and clean-tech clients as a Director in RBS’s corporate finance team. As CEO of international certification body the Gold Standard, Adrian oversaw the development of result-based finance tools that have enabled hundreds of clean technology and sustainable land-use projects to attract millions of dollars in investment. He also supported Fairtrade International’s creation of the Fairtrade Climate Standard.  

Adrian is a Non-Executive Director of Evora, a leading sustainable real-estate adviser and software business.

Julie joined Panmure Gordon in 2015 and has 20 years’ experience in life sciences research across a wide range of healthcare sub-sectors. She previously worked at Canaccord Genuity, Piper Jaffray and Nomura, having started her City career at Beeson Gregory, where she became Head of Life Sciences Research. Julie has a PhD in Microbiology from the University of Kent and industry experience in both Europe and the US. She is also a panel member for NIHR i4i (invention for innovation), assessing early-stage medical technologies.

We are delighted to welcome Alice to the voting panel and further information will be provided in due course.

Catherine is a Managing Director and Head of the Global Smaller Companies team with specific responsibility for the smaller cap strategies. In June 2009, Catherine was appointed Lead Manager of the Responsible UK Equity Growth and Responsible UK Income Funds. She joined the group in 2000. Prior to this Catherine spent nine years at Framlington, where she managed both retail and institutional UK smaller company funds. She has an MA (Hons) in Geography from the University of Oxford and is a member of the CFA Society of the UK.

We are delighted to welcome Neal to the voting panel and further information will be provided in due course.

Stuart is the Managing Partner of Odyssean Capital, which he founded in 2017. He has spent the last 17 years investing in public and private UK small and mid-size corporates and a further two years providing investment advice in the same field.

Prior to founding Odyssean he was a Director and Fund Manager at GVQ Investment Management. In 2009, he became Lead Fund Manager of Strategic Equity Capital plc. Over the following seven years, he was instrumental in driving a turnaround in the performance and fortunes of this closed-ended fund.

Stuart began his career as a strategy consultant undertaking commercial due diligence and strategy projects for Private Equity and corporate clients. In 2001 he joined HgCapital and spent five years executing small and mid-cap leveraged buyouts in the UK and Germany, including working on a number of public to private transactions of UK quoted companies.

Gervais manages a number of funds with Martin Turner that aggregate to over £1.5bn, including the Diverse Income Trust plc. He is also Senior Executive Director at Miton Group plc, the independently listed fund management group that has a reputation for offering strategies that are distinct from most others. His fund management career extends over nearly 30 years, including 17 years with Gartmore Group Ltd, where he was Head of UK Small Companies, investing in UK smaller companies and Irish equities. He was awarded Investor of the Year by Grant Thornton at its Quoted Company Dinner in both 2009 and 2010 and Fund Manager of the Year 2014 by What Investment. Gervais is Chairman of the Quoted Companies Alliance, a Board member of the Investment Association and a member of the AIM Advisory Council. He published “Slow Finance” in 2011, “The Future is Small” in 2014 and “The Retreat of Globalisation” at the end of 2016.