Ian is non-voting Chairman of the Voting Panel. 

Ian is the founder of the plc awards, (way back in 1987), and it has been held annually, in March, every year since. 

He is a Director of Ford Sinclair Ltd., Chairman of Design Portfolio Marketing Services Ltd. and a member of the Investor Relations Society.

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, he has been active in helping many many companies with their investor communication and corporate reporting requirements.

Roland Arnold, CFA, Director and Portfolio Manager, is a member of the Emerging Companies within the Fundamental Equity Division of BlackRock's Active Equity Group. He has been manager of the BlackRock UK Special Situations Fund since August 2012, Blackrock UK Smaller Companies fund since March 2015, and the Blackrock Smaller Companies Investment Trust since April 2018. Roland has been managing Small & Mid Cap UK Equity Portfolios since 2006. His service with the firm dates back to 2000, including his years with Merrill Lynch Investment Managers (MLIM), which merged with BlackRock in 2006.

Louise is a partner in the Equity Capital Markets team at Squire Patton Boggs. She has a wide range of experience advising public companies on initial public offerings, secondary fundraising transactions, mergers and acquisitions, takeovers, reorganisations and corporate governance.

Her work varies between the UK and cross border and she works closely with executives, in-house legal teams and general counsel both in the UK and globally. She has previously held the position of Group Legal Director at a FTSE 250 company. Louise is a member of the Regional Advisory Group of the London Stock Exchange plc for the North-West.

Adam has worked on the Investec sales desk for 23 years selling UK equities into long only and hedge fund clients mainly based in London. Adam covers all sectors and companies of all sizes.

Oliver manages the institutional clients of the business and also leads our research into UK ‘primary’ market opportunities and he is lead manager of the IFSL RC Brown UK Primary Opportunities Fund whilst also heading up RCBIM’s AIM IHT Service. He graduated from Birmingham University with a degree in Money, Banking and Finance, he qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Grant Thornton, where he worked with listed clients in a variety of sectors, specialising in the construction, leisure and IT industries. He joined RCBIM in 2006 and is a former President of The Bristol Junior Chamber of Commerce. 

James joined Berenberg in Jan 2018 as Head of UK Sales. He has over 18 years of Equity Sales experience, previously heading UK Mid & Small Cap Sales at Barclays and JPMorgan Cazenove. His institutional clients are a mixture of UK/Pan Euro long only and hedge funds across all market cap ranges. He has a Masters in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Exeter.

Guido is a fund manager at Montanaro Asset Management, which he joined in 2015. Focusing on small and midcap companies, he is the lead manager of the Montanaro UK Income Fund and co-manager of the Montanaro Global Innovation Fund. He also has research responsibilities for the Technology sector. Prior to joining Montanaro, Guido spent six years at Rothschild & Co, where he advised UK and European clients on mergers and acquisitions, as well as a range of general corporate finance issues. He graduated from the University of Cambridge in 2008 with an MSci in Experimental and Theoretical Physics.

Victoria joined J.P. Morgan Asset Management in the European Research team covering the healthcare sector over fifteen years ago. She also contributes to the J.P. Morgan Global Healthcare Fund. She became a CFA Charterholder in 2009 and has a BSc in Chemistry from Durham University.

David has over 15 years of experience covering small and mid cap UK equities. He joined Jefferies in 2021 to help expand its UK Industrials franchise and prior to that he covered Oil Service and E&Ps at both Credit Suisse and Macquarie. He started off his career on Evolution's Travel & Leisure team having graduated from the University of Birmingham with a degree in Economics and Spanish.

Jo is a Senior Partner at BDO LLP. She acts as Relationship Partner for many of BDO’s largest FTSE, AIM and other listed clients, bringing together all non-audit services including tax, corporate finance, digital and risk advisory services, valuations and restructuring services. For those companies with a significant international footprint, Jo coordinates the work of BDO’s strong international network covering 164 countries. Jo believes a trusted adviser relationship is key in the provision of services to Public Interest Entities and Other Entities of Public Interest, based on a strong understanding of clients’ business objectives and a key focus on regulation, governance and reputation. Together, Jo and her colleagues leverage the power of BDO’s UK specialist teams and strong international network of 95,000 people across 164 countries. Jo is a member of BDO’s Partnership Council, the principal governance body for the firm, and BDO’s Business Interest Oversight Board, focused on key strategic matters affecting the business.

Abby is Deputy Head of Smaller Companies at abrdn, having joined the Smaller Companies team in January 2016. Abby is responsible for managing the UK Smaller Companies and UK Mid Cap funds, including one investment trust. She also has extensive research responsibilities across the UK Small and Mid cap universes. Abby has been at Standard Life Investments (now abrdn) since February 2013, on the UK Larger Companies team, where she ran UK Equity mandates and was an analyst across a range of sectors. She has 15 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.

Ben is a Director of ECM & Corporate Broking at Investec. He joined in 2019 and focuses on providing strategic and transactional advice to UK listed companies across the market cap spectrum. He has a wide range of experience advising companies on IPOs, secondary capital raisings, and M&A. Prior to Investec he was a senior member of the UK ECM team at Canaccord Genuity.  Ben graduated with a BA Hons in History from Durham University.

Alex is Head of Sales at Singer Capital Markets, 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.

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 12 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.

Robert is an Investment Director at Rathbones Group plc. He has over 30 years’ experience managing equity oriented global multi-asset portfolios for wealthy private clients, trusts, pensions and charities.

After University, RMA Sandhurst and serving as an Army Officer for four years, he joined the City stockbrokers Laurence Keen that was acquired by Rathbones in 1995. He has held a number of senior roles within Rathbones, including sitting on the Board, Executive and Management Committees of the main operating company. He now serves on the Boards of the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment and the Impact Investing Institute.

In 2018 Robert was elected as Alderman of the City of London having previously spent eight years as a Common Councillor, during which he chaired the City of London Corporation’s Investment Committee and the Financial Investment Board. He is also a Past Master Guild of Investment Managers (2019-20) and is on the Court of the Haberdashers’ Company and chairs the Company’s Securities Committee.

Chris is a Senior Fund Manager within the Octopus Investments Quoted Companies Team. He works across all desk portfolios and is lead manager on the FP Octopus UK Multi Cap Income Fund, and a co-manager on the FP Octopus UK Micro Cap Growth & FP Octopus UK Future Generation Funds. He has been a specialist within the quoted UK Smaller Company market for over 20 years. In 2016, he joined Octopus from Citigroup where he led the UK Small and Mid-Cap Equity research team focusing across a variety of sectors. Prior to this he spent almost seven years on the Smaller Companies team at Gartmore Investment Management as an analyst and investment manager. He graduated from the University of Aberdeen.

Samantha is a partner in the corporate group, sitting in the firm's Public Companies and Capital Markets Team, specialising in corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions and equity capital markets.

Samantha has extensive experience of acting for companies, or their advisers, on IPOs and secondary transactions both on AIM and on the main market of the London Stock Exchange plc, and on transactions involving the Toronto and Australian exchanges. She regularly advises on a range of domestic and cross border M&A transactions, including joint-ventures, private M&A and public takeovers. Samantha has experience in a range of sectors including retail and consumer, gaming, life sciences, healthcare, cannabis and mining.

Samantha leads the firm's UK Cannabis Group and is a member of the World Law Group's Cannabis Group and a member of the Cannabis Industry Council. She is consistently ranked as a Top 200 Cannabis Lawyer.

George is a contributing analyst at Progressive Research covering UK technology plcs for UK, mainland European and US investors. A City technology analyst since the late 1990s and working at investment banks such as Panmure Gordon, Albert E Sharp and Stifel, George has been Reuters and Starmine rated and was twice voted Analyst of the Year. Prior to his City career, George spent a decade as an IT industry analyst working for public and private sector organisations and technology companies in the UK, Europe and the US. George is a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists.

Jean is a UK/European small and mid-cap fund manager at Schroders since 2016.
She joined the City on the Morgan Stanley graduate programme in 1999, earned the CFA designation and became an award-winning sell-side equity analyst. She has also worked for the UK Government, including HM Treasury. Jean is a mathematician by training and speaks fluent French.

Alex is Senior Fund Manager of the JOHCM UK Dynamic Strategy. He joined JOHCM in March 2003 as Assistant Fund Manager of the JOHCM UK Growth Strategy, working together with Mark Costar (Lead Fund Manager). Alex developed and launched UK Dynamic in June 2008, in doing so becoming the first internally developed Fund Manager to launch a new and 'home grown' investment process at JOHCM, as well as the first to be backed by seed capital solely from JOHCM's own balance sheet. Prior to joining JOHCM, Alex spent his early investment career at three independent UK stockbroking firms, starting his career as a Research Associate at Astaire & Partners before moving into corporate and non-corporate sales roles at Teather & Greenwood and Numis Securities. Alex is a Fellow of the Securities Institute and holds the Securities Institute Diploma. He also holds a BA (Hons) in Politics from the University of Nottingham.

Neil has been at Edison for the last 20 years leading the analyst teams as Director of Content & Strategy and establishing the firm as the leading issuer sponsored research firm. He has also led the firm’s thought leadership on the equity research market.

Neil is a qualified accountant (PwC) with nine years’ experience as an equities analyst at Goldman Sachs. As Goldman’s building and materials analyst in London, he was ranked second by both Institutional Investor and Reuters. He left Goldman Sachs to help set up the specialist trading hedge fund, Tusker Capital.

Neil (not to be confused with the legendary Neil Shah at Edison) joined the London Stock Exchange in July 2020 to lead business development for the Tech sector. He was previously an investment banker focused on the tech sector for 15+ years. He started his career in the global technology investment banking team at Dresdner Kleinwort in London before joining US-boutique firm, Thomas Weisel Partners where he co-founded TWP’s European Technology practice with Simon Russell. Following TWP’s acquisition by Stifel, Neil helped build out Stifel’s offering beyond global M&A into Equities with Arno Goboyan and built a tech broking franchise with Fred Walsh, Alex Price, George O’Connor, Lee Simpson and Luke Holbrook. 

In July 2020, Marcus Stuttard gave Neil an offer he could not refuse, to join the London Stock Exchange and help more entrepreneurs access and succeed in public markets.

Neil studied Economics at The London School of Economics and lives in East London with his wife and two boys.

Alice has over 25 years’ experience advising companies and engaging with investors. She heads up Rothschild & Co’s Investor Advisory team which is focused on all aspects of investor engagement including activism, defense, governance and remuneration, transaction support for M&A situations, perception studies, equity messaging, ongoing equity marketing and shareholder targeting. 
In the last 3 years, she has advised on some of the most high profile public and private European listed activism situations, successfully helping Companies to prepare for and respond to challenges providing integrated unconflicted support in an increasingly challenging environment. 

Alice was previously number one ranked Head of UK and European Mid Cap Sales at Deutsche Bank and started her career in corporate broking at NatWest Markets/BT Alex Brown. She joined Scott Harris, an independent equity marketing boutique in 2013, which was acquired by Rothschild & Co, 4 years ago to create the Investor Advisory business. She is also a Trustee for the NMR Pension Fund. 

Richard Staveley is the fund manager of Rockwood Strategic Plc, managed by Harwood Capital LLP, where is a Partner. Both a qualified Chartered Accountant (PwC) and Chartered Financial Analyst, Richard has over 22 years of active lead fund manager responsibility in UK small cap equities. He was a co-Founder of River & Mercantile Plc and Head of Small Companies at both Société Générale Asset Management and Majedie Asset Management. Richard is a NED at Centaur Media Plc and Pressure Technologies Plc.

Lisa Tugwell, IIMR, has lead RBC’s Pan European Equities Small & Mid Cap Sales Team since 2019. An Engineer by training, Lisa has worked in the Smaller companies sector for over 25 years. She started on the buy side at M&G as a portfolio manager in the smaller companies and recovery teams, then transferred to the sell side where she has worked at boutique brokers, including Numis, Liberum and MainFirst as well as heading the Pan European SMID Distribution at Credit Suisse and Natixis, before joining RBC to build out the Small & Mid cap product & distribution. Her Institutional clients span all market cap ranges. Lisa has a Masters in Mechanical Engineering from Cambridge University. Proud parent to two lively tweens, her outside interests also include wine production, house restoration and animal rescues!

Vineet is a commercial banking leader at Citi’s UK commercial bank (CCB). CCB was set-up in 2017 and offer Citi’s global commercial and investment banking coverage in 100 countries to UK head-quartered and globally oriented mid-size corporates (company revenue upto $4bn). He had been actively involved in setting-up the business from inception and ongoing strategy execution. He now runs UK Industrials banking coverage business and is responsible for the articulation and execution of the growth strategy for the Industrials sector in the UK, and to build and lead a team of bankers focussing on the UK mid-corporate space.
 
Vineet has over 17 years of banking experience, and throughout his career, he has advised his clients on cross-border financing, M&A financing, syndications, capital market issuances and global cash, working capital and treasury risk management. In his early career, he also worked in the industry as downstream Oil & Gas refinery engineer. Vineet has an Honors Chemical Engineering Degree and MBA in Finance.

Stuart is the Managing Partner of Odyssean Capital, which he founded in 2017. He has been investing in public and private UK small and mid-size corporates for 22 years, spending a further two years providing investment advice in the same field. He has managed investment trusts focused on investing in UK smaller companies for some 13 years. In 2009, he became lead fund manager of Strategic Equity Capital plc and oversaw a significant turnaround in its performance and narrowing of discount. In 2018 he led the IPO of Odyssean Investment Trust plc.
 
Stuart began his career as a strategy consultant undertaking commercial due diligence and strategy projects for private equity and corporate clients. He subsequently spent five years at HgCapital executing small and mid-cap leveraged buyouts including working on a number of public to private transactions of UK quoted companies.

Gervais Williams is Head of Equities at Premier Miton Investors and manages a number of funds and trusts that aggregate to over £1.5bn, he joined the group in 2011. His fund management career extends over 30 years including 17 years at Gartmore Group Ltd, where he was Head of UK Small Companies investing in UK smaller companies and Irish equities. Gervais is a member of the AIM Advisory Council, and a board member of the Quoted Companies Alliance. He was a member of the Patient Capital Review panel with the Chancellor of the Exchequer two years ago where the recommendations were put into legislation in the subsequent budget. Gervais Williams has published three books, 'Slow Finance' in the autumn of 2011 (Bloomsbury), 'The Future is Small' published in November 2014 (Harriman House) and 'The Retreat of Globalisation' published in December 2016 (Harriman House).

James has 38 years’ experience in the City, initially joining the Asset Management department of Montagu Loebl Stanley (part of the Robert Fleming Group) in 1986 before going on to work at Greig Middleton, Seymour Pierce Butterfield and Henry Cooke Lumsden, followed by 16 years in corporate broking and institutional sales (latterly as Director of Equities at Charles Stanley Securities). He is also a member of the AiM Awards Judging Panel as well as the LSE AIM Advisory Group. He joined Winterflood Securities in November 2015.