Meet the new-look faculty board

Faculty Chair 

Alistair Brew

Head of investment operations at BGF

Alistair has been a faculty board member since 2018 and this year succeeded Mo Merali, who was chair of the faculty for five years. Brew started his career with PwC in 1995, training as an ACA in corporate recovery, before joining the valuations team within corporate finance. After six years, he joined Close Brothers Investments as a divisional director. In 2005, he moved to Octopus Investments’ growth capital team and in 2011, just after it was founded, he joined BGF. He ran its London investment team before moving into his current role, focused on delivering best practice. He is on the board of three BGF portfolio companies: Evo Dental, Gymbox and Juriba. He also chairs the BVCA’s impact investment advisory group, which he says promotes “one of the fastest growing areas of investment and will also bring insights to the work of the faculty”. 

“The M&A world is so reliant on networking,” says Brew. “The variety of people involved in corporate finance is represented by the faculty’s membership – lead advisory, banking, private equity, lawyers and transaction services. This community and the board that represents them really reflects the importance of relationships in M&A – it’s the key strength of the faculty.

“Our board has always had tremendous broad representation, as does the current one. This range of backgrounds is so important if we are to continue to have an influence on consultations and other things that affect M&A practitioners. Healthy M&A and investment is the lifeblood of a healthy economy.”

New members

Jo Davenport

Corporate finance transaction services partner, BDO

In 1997, after graduating from the University of Nottingham with a degree in chemistry, Jo Davenport joined BDO’s audit team to train as an ACA. In 2002, she joined transaction services and was promoted to partner in November 2021. She specialises in private equity due diligence, pre-acquisition transaction services, vendor due diligence and reporting accountant assignments for AIM transactions, both UK and international. Her recent experience has focused on the consumer goods, retail, leisure and hospitality sectors. She advised on the AIM IPO of Marks Electrical Group, and has provided corporate finance advice to retailers including Fever-Tree Drinks, Hotel Chocolat and Vinted; restaurant groups Hakkasan, D&D London, Caprice Holdings and Côte; and various travel companies including Iglu.com and On The Go Tours.

“It is an honour to join the Corporate Finance Faculty board, to sit among representatives from so many firms and to hear everyone’s differing and well-considered views,” says Davenport. “I have been really impressed with the level of work that the faculty does for its members with government and regulators. There is also the volume of insightful material and content the faculty regularly produces, which will become even more useful when ICAEW’s revised CPD regulations come into effect in November.”

James Pincus

Corporate finance partner, PwC

James Pincus is PwC’s deals ESG leader and heads up its energy, utilities, resources and infrastructure team. He started his career with Clifford Chance and qualified as a solicitor in 1997. He joined HSBC in 2000 and began working in infrastructure advisory. He left HSBC in 2018 to join PwC as head of the energy, utilities, resources and infrastructure team. He has more than 25 years of M&A experience, advising clients on UK domestic and global corporate finance transactions, as well as M&A, joint ventures, equity fundraising and IPOs and acquisition financings. Recent deals have included advising Hanwha Energy on the sale of 200MW of operational battery energy storage system assets in Ireland; DIF on its investment into Field Energy, a battery storage developer; and on the sale of Cornwall Insights to Bowmark Capital.

“All market participants are now beginning to tailor their investments to manage the transition towards a low-carbon, smarter, decentralised and more electrified system,” says Pincus. “This will inevitably lead to a material reallocation of capital and significant corporate finance opportunities. Advisers with expertise and knowledge of the current and future trends in energy transition will be increasingly valuable within the corporate finance constituency. Those specialist advisers are represented in the faculty membership and I am pleased to represent the views of that part of the membership on the faculty board.”

John Flint

Chief executive of the UK Infrastructure Bank and former group CEO of HSBC

In 1989, with a degree in economics from Portsmouth Polytechnic, John Flint joined HSBC as a graduate trainee. Over a 30-year career, he rose to group chief executive, after spending almost 20 years on the trading floor, on fixed income and derivatives trading, and the next 10 in retail banking, wealth management, asset management and treasury. He became UK Infrastructure Bank’s CEO in 2021.

“The Bank is here to work with the market and the public sector to solve financing problems around climate change and regional and local economic growth,” says Flint. “Through doing this, we have announced investments of about £1.55bn into sustainable projects across the country, unlocking more than £6.2bn in private capital in the process. We will continue to foster key partnerships between the private and public sector to help identify, finance and develop the sustainable infrastructure needed to make the UK’s net-zero ambitions a reality.”

Louis Taylor

CEO, British Business Bank

Prior to joining the British Business Bank, Louis Taylor was chief executive of UK Export Finance (UKEF), and held roles as a director general in the Department for International Trade. Before joining UKEF, he spent 11 years with Standard Chartered Bank. From 2013 to 2015 he was chief operating officer of Group Treasury, based in London. Before that, he spent three years as the bank’s CEO for Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, based in Ho Chi Minh City, during which time he was also vice-chairman of the European Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam. When he joined Standard Chartered in 2004, he worked in corporate development and before that spent eight years working for JP Morgan in debt capital markets and M&A, and five years in corporate development and strategy with Cookson Group Plc and BTR plc.

He is a trustee of the Sightsavers charity, which prevents sight loss and avoidable blindness, and promotes equal rights for the disabled. He is also a former chair of trustees of the charity Music in Prisons, which runs music education projects to help rehabilitate offenders.

“ICAEW’s Corporate Finance Faculty plays an important role for its members, providing guidance, expertise and resources as well as advocacy and networking opportunities,” says Taylor. “Having a broad representation of member firms on the faculty’s board is vital so that their wide range of views can be taken into consideration across all of its work.”

Tandeep Minhas

Corporate partner, Taylor Wessing

Tandeep Minhas heads Taylor Wessing’s corporate finance and equity capital markets team in the UK. She has been a member of the Corporate Finance Faculty’s technical committee for more than 15 years, and has 25-plus years of corporate finance experience.

Minhas joined Taylor Wessing in 2010 from SJ Berwin, where she had spent 11 years, the last four of which were as corporate partner. Prior to that she spent two years with DLA Piper in Liverpool, having trained as a lawyer with Alsop Wilkinson (now DLA) in Liverpool.

Her specialism lies in M&A and the UK public markets and she has advised on numerous M&A transactions, flotations and secondary fundraisings on both the main market and AIM, acting for companies and corporate finance firms, Nomads and sponsors. Her clients have included international companies across a wide range of sectors including real estate, infrastructure, investment entities, emerging markets, natural resources, mining, financial services, gaming and technology. She is also lead corporate partner in Taylor Wessing’s India Business Group.

“I have worked for a variety of clients,” says Minhas. “As a lawyer, I bring a different perspective on M&A to that of most accountants. The faculty’s membership is made up mostly of ACA-trained corporate finance advisers, but we also have private equity investors, investment bankers and brokers and lawyers. All those groups are represented on the board and as a result we can bring a more rounded and comprehensive view on the challenges facing corporate finance and M&A. The board, and for that matter faculty membership, reflects the teams that would advise on deals in practice. We all work together as advisers. We’re all affected by regulation. So when consultations come out on changes, be it to the Takeover Code or the Listing Rules, the strength in our response is that we all contribute and give our views. That way we get a measured response, reflecting the whole of the market. There’s a lot of experience around our faculty board table and that provides invaluable insight, so we can best support members’ interests.”

Giles Distin

Corporate finance partner, Addleshaw Goddard

Giles Distin joined law firm Addleshaw Goddard in 2015, from Squire Patton Boggs, where he had been corporate finance partner. He is an expert in advising on UK securities regulation and on UK listed company transactions on the main market and AIM. He previously spent two years on secondment at the UK Takeover Panel and contributes regularly to ICAEW’s submissions to the Panel.

“The Corporate Finance Faculty is a broad church when it comes to its membership, and it’s important, therefore, that a wide range of disciplines is represented on the board,” says Distin. “It means that the faculty is able to garner the views from all different angles on M&A advisory and corporate finance. And from a personal point of view, it’s very useful to hear the experience from different types of advisers, operating in sometimes different segments of the market to myself.”

Nicola Longfield

Head of deal advisory transaction services at KPMG

Nicola Longfield started her career as a financial analyst with Warner Music, is CIMA qualified and is an affiliate member of the ICAEW. She joined KPMG in 2000 and became a partner in 2011. She focusses on consumer deals, and has advised a range of corporate and private equity clients on M&A transactions across the globe.

“I am delighted to be joining the Corporate Finance Faculty board. There is great value in a network of professionals representing such a vast range of members from professional advisory firms, investment banks, private equity, law firms and beyond. I see the network being able to work together on market trends and ensuring we always have one eye on the future, and how our advice and business models will evolve. The ultimate aim is to ensure we are enabling M&A to thrive.”

Keely Woodley 

Head of UK corporate finance advisory, Grant Thornton

Keely Woodley joined Grant Thornton’s M&A team in 2005, after five years working with 3i, where she trained as an ACA, and latterly worked on portfolio. She founded and grew Grant Thornton’s business services sector team, and its training and skills sector and education sector teams. Having delivered more than 100 deals over almost 20 years for Grant Thornton, she was promoted to her current role in 2018.

“I’m excited about helping ICAEW continue to modernise and refresh and reform the corporate finance profession to reflect the diverse clients we have the opportunity and privilege to represent,” says Woodley. “I am personally looking forward to sharing best practice in this area and learning from other member firms to continually develop and hone our own approach.”