Growth & Innovation Forum 2019
Roland Spencer

Roland Spencer, Head of Corporate Development - AJ OLD

09.40
Roland is Head of Corporate Development at AJ Bell his role includes responsibility for sponsorship and advertising across their portfolio of investor engagement webinars and events, awards, websites and Shares magazine having joined the publication in 2008. Roland started his career in financial media in 2000 and has experience in the hedge fund, institutional investment and pensions and retirement sectors.
Julian Morse

Julian Morse, Head of Growth Companies - Cenkos Securities (CNKS)

09.40

Julian is Head of the Growth Companies Team and one of the founding members of Cenkos, as well as being appointed as an executive board member of Cenkos Securities plc. He has over 22 years’ experience in the City, and he has been involved in 100s of successful fund raisings and IPOs. Previously, Julian was a Director at Beeson Gregory and Evolution Securities.

 

Richard Penny

Richard Penny, Fund Manager - CRUX Asset Management

09.45

Richard joined CRUX Asset Management in June 2018 from Legal & General Investment Management. Richard is 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.

Professor Christopher Hancock

Professor Christopher Hancock, Founder & CTO - Creo Medical Group (CREO)

10.05

Chris is the founder of Creo Medical with over 20 years’ experience in medical device innovation and development. He holds a personal Chair in the Medical Microwave Systems Research Group at Bangor University. Chris is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, a Chartered Physicist, Fellow of the Institute of Engineering and Technology, a Chartered Engineer and a Senior Member of the IEEE. He is also a Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor at UCL and was awarded Katherine Burr Blodgett Gold Medal and Prize in 2018 for work on the Creo Medical Platform Technology. Chris is a named inventor and lead author on over 800 granted patents, patent applications and international journal publications.

James Henderson

James Henderson, Fund Manager - Lowland Investment Company (LWI)

10.20
(Biography coming soon)
Neil Johnson

Neil Johnson, CEO - Duke Royalty (DUKE)

10.35

Neil Johnson is Duke Royalty’s founder and CEO.  Mr. Johnson has 25 years of experience in investment banking and fund management in the Canadian and UK capital markets. During his 19 years at Canaccord Genuity, he was Head of Corporate Finance for 7 years in London and raised over £3 billion for Canadian dual-listed companies, and Canaccord became AIM’s #1 Broker.

Philip Kirkham

Philip Kirkham, CEO - Hardide (HDD)

10.50

Philip has a general management career spanning more than 40 years, the last 30 years at board level. Positions include Divisional Managing Director, MS International plc; Senior Vice President Metals Division, Firth Rixson Ltd; Executive Vice President, Rolls-Royce plc and CEO, Materials Advantage Group. Prior to this he held senior operational roles at the British Steel Corporation and Sheffield Forgemasters. He is a Chartered Engineer and holds a BSc in Chemical Engineering and an MSc in Advanced Manufacturing Management.

Nick Sleep

Nick Sleep, CTO - Intelligent Ultrasound Group (MED)

11.40

Nick Sleep is Chief Technology Officer of Intelligent Ultrasound. Before joining the Group, Nick ran his own consultancy specialising in providing management support to early stage companies, one of his clients being MedaPhor Limited. Nick is a software engineer by background, but has also run companies in areas as diverse as stem cell therapeutics and biofuels. Previous companies include The Technology Partnership, The Automation Partnership, Procognia and Magnecell. 

 

Steven Cooklin

Steven Cooklin, CEO - Manolete Partners (MANO)

12.00

Steven Cooklin founded Manolete Partners in 2009 and is Chief Executive. Steven is a Chartered Accountant having qualified at Coopers and Lybrand in 1991. Steven has over 20 years’ experience in corporate finance with National Westminster Bank, Calder Corporate Advisory Ltd and Hill Samuel Investment Bank and is a former director of HSBC Investment Bank (Corporate Finance Division). Steven is an Associate Member of The Association of Business Recovery Professionals.

Simon Cleaver

Simon Cleaver, CEO - CloudCall Group

12.15

Simon is a highly experienced and passionate tech-focused entrepreneur with a history of successfully building and developing companies in both the private and public arenas. As CEO, Simon has led CloudCall to continued year on year turnover growth, with run-rate revenue now reaching £10m p.a. Employing more than 150 people in four countries, CloudCall is now a business recognised as one of the fastest growing tech companies in the UK.

Philip Johnston

Philip Johnston, CEO - Trackwise (TWD)

12.30

Philip’s early career was in the space industry which included a key project management role in the Prime Contractor team for Envisat, a major European satellite programme. Philip joined Trackwise in 1999 and acquired the Company in 2000. Under his stewardship the Company has enjoyed sustained growth based largely through export success and innovation. Philip is named inventor on a number of UK and international patents.

Philip holds degrees in both Aeronautical Engineering and Law and is a Chartered Engineer.

Gervais Williams

Gervais Williams, Senior Executive Director - Miton Group

14.10

Gervais Williams joined Miton Group plc in 2011. He manages a number of funds and trusts that aggregate to a little under £2.0bn. His fund management career extends over 30 years including 17 years at Gartmore. Gervais is a member of the AIM Advisory Council, chairman of the Quoted Companies Alliance and a board member of The Investment Association. He has written three books 'Slow Finance'; 'The Future is Small'; and his most recent book 'The Retreat of Globalisation.

Graham Bird

Graham Bird, Managing Director of Strategic Equity - Gresham House

14.30

Graham leads the Strategic Public Equity strategy alongside Tony Dalwood. He is experienced in fund management and in building both corporate advisory and asset management businesses.

Prior to joining Gresham House in 2015, Graham held positions in PayPoint Plc as a senior executive, director of strategic planning and corporate development and was executive chairman and president of PayByPhone, a multi-national division of PayPoint operating out of Canada, the UK and France between 2010-2014.

Preceding Paypoint, Graham was a fund manager and head of Strategic investment at SVG Investment Managers (SVGIM) where he helped to establish and then co-manage the Strategic Recovery Fund II and Strategic Equity Capital Investment Trust.

Before joining SVGIM Graham was a director in the Corporate Finance division at JP Morgan Cazenove.

James Hickman

James Hickman, CCO - FairFX Group (FFX)

14.45

James has been involved in financial markets for 25 years, initially joining Investment Management firm Williams de Broe and moving on as Investment Director at Brewin Dolphin Securities. Within the past 10 years, he served as Managing Director of fintech FX business, Caxton, where he developed and ran several successful prepaid currency card programmes, as well as a leading online money transfer platform. James joined FairFX at the end of 2016 as Chief Commercial Officer where most recently he was involved in a fundraise and subsequent acquisition of CardOneBanking and City Forex.

Martin Higginson

Martin Higginson, CEO - Immotion Group

15.00

Martin is a seasoned TMT entrepreneur who has established and listed multiple businesses. This includes Monstermob Group Plc, which listed on AIM in 2003 and, over a three year period, grew to become a Top 50 AIM listed business with a market capitalisation of £192m. This was sold to Zed Worldwide in 2006. Martin has subsequently founded a range of businesses including Cityblock plc, NetPlayTV plc, an interactive TV gaming business which boasted exclusive partnerships with Virgin Media, Channel Five, and ITV; and Digitalbox, a digital media business.

Rob Shaw

Rob Shaw, CEO - Jaywing

15.15

Rob Shaw is the Chief Executive of Jaywing. The company is a data science-led agency and consulting business, with a marketing technology division and growing international footprint. With over 30 year’s experience in the technology sector – particularly in the fields of digital and search marketing – Rob has managed services for some of the UK's largest brands including Tesco, O2 and Pets at Home. Employing over 450 people more than 70 of whom are experienced data scientists, Jaywing has offices in Sheffield, Leeds, London, Newbury and Sydney.

Tim Watts

Tim Watts, CEO - Shield Therapeutics (STX)

15.30

Tim joined Shield Therapeutics as Interim Chief Financial Officer in August 2018 and has over 25 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical and biotech sectors. A qualified chartered accountant, Tim was at AstraZeneca for 22 years, and was Group Financial Controller of AstraZeneca from 2002 to 2006. Between 2007 and 2011 Tim was CFO of Archimedes Pharma and CFO of Oxford Biomedica plc from 2012 until September 2017. Tim is also a non-executive director of Fusion Antibodies plc.

 

Giulio Cerroni

Giulio Cerroni, CEO - IXICO (IXI)

15.45

Giulio has over thirty years of experience in the life sciences sector and a track record of growing business operations in Europe, the US and Asia. Prior to IXICO, Giulio held global leadership roles at Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc. and LGC Ltd, where he transformed the scale of LGC’s Genomics division, completing 3 acquisitions in under eighteen months. Giulio was a member of the executive leadership team responsible for the successful sale of LGC Ltd to global investment firm, KKR & Co. Inc. He joined IXICO as CEO in February 2017.