John is a qualified Chartered Accountant with over 21 years of experience gained from a mix of CFO and corporate advisory roles across industries as diverse as manufacturing, construction, corporate finance, forestry and logistic sectors.

He has worked as CFO for Port Taranaki in New Zealand, Director of BDO Chartered Accountants, and CFO for York Timbers Limited (South African Stock Exchange Listed).

John has led projects which have delivered significant shareholder value through mergers and acquisitions, strategic change management and information systems improvements.

His goal is to influence businesses to grow and to ultimately enhance shareholder value through strategic analysis, teamwork and efficiency. John has a high level of financial acumen yet believes in a keep it simple approach and will provide you with advice and guidance to get your business successful and growing.

Pete has more than 20 years of international experience in both America and Europe with a track record for successfully implementing business transformation and change management, process improvement, and cost reduction. He is a dynamic leader with excellent interpersonal skills and a communication style that is open and clear to any audience. He is a motivator who thrives on challenges of change and maximizing the development of talent to deliver results. Pete is a strategic thinker and negotiator with a proven track record of creating vision and delivering change whilst still upholding personal and company ethos.

Jeremy Walker – Group Shareholder and FD Centre Director & Regional Director, West Country

Jeremy qualified as a chartered accountant with Binder Hamlyn in 1980 and since then has held financial director roles in several SMEs of various sizes (T/O £2m to £30m) and in various sectors (import, distribution, retail, mail order, publishing, telecoms, financial services). Entrepreneurial by nature, Jeremy has founded two start up businesses from his own innovative ideas, has acquired and merged several businesses for companies and has sold his own business. He has experience of raising private equity, VC and commercial bank funding and was successful in completing an MBI/MBO deal raising £13m. Over his 25 year career Jeremy has acquired invaluable knowledge and experience of the problems facing SMEs in both operational and financial areas.

Lucy is responsible for Group Brand Alignment for The Liberti Group. For the last 14 years Lucy has run several businesses and worked with businesses in a variety of sectors. She is passionate about making a difference in businesses by enabling them to realise the potential of their brand and building the talent of their leaders in order to create alignment.

She spent the first half of her career with ICI and Unilever where she developed international marketing, brand and new product initiatives for leading multi-million pound brands, she was involved with large scale takeovers and mergers and managing culture change initiatives. She was instrumental in launching a new food brand Quorn into the market in the 80’s which is now a major household name.

Lucy cares deeply and prides herself on exceptional quality in what she does. Her warmth and presence helps her gain trust and strong empathy with people very quickly.

Steve Settle, Regional Director – The CFO Centre Asia

Steve is a Fellow of the Chartered Accountants in England & Wales and a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia. He has a Masters in Business Administration from Macquarie University and a Masters of Arts in Engineering from St. Johns College Cambridge.

He qualified with Deloitte Haskins and Sells in London before moving to Price Waterhouse in Sydney. After moving into commerce in his mid twenties, he gained extensive experience in the service sector working in radio, cinema and advertising before moving to Singapore in 2000 as the Asia Pacific CFO for Thomson Financial (now Thomson Reuters). Subsequently he was appointed CFO for the Thomson joint venture start up U21Global, an online graduate school, where he helped to grow the operation to in excess of 5,000 students in over 80 countries.

In his time as a CFO, he has always focussed on developing a close business relationship with the CEO and partnership with all the key operating units of the organization. Steve has worked in large and small companies, has held finance, information technology, human resource and operational responsibilities. Amongst other competacies, he has experience of acquisitions and disposals together with system implementation and business rationalization.

In recent years he has been specializing in personal wealth management and is currently COO/Client Partner for Jigsaw Wealth Management. He is President of the British Club in Singapore and lives with his wife Nikki and two teenage sons, Oscar and Louis.

Rowan De Klerk, CEO – The FD Centre South Africa

Rowan De Klerk is a strategic, commercial, business professional, with 25 years experience, working with both, large corporations and small, medium enterprises.

Prior to bringing the FD Centre concept and brand to South Africa, Rowan was founder and then partner in a management consultancy practice, for 8 years, focusing on business and financial strategy solutions for a broad range of clients. Since completing articles at KPMG, Rowan has gained more than 12 years’ experience as a serial Finance Director and Managing Director with diverse leadership and board exposure.

Rowan’s knowledge spans: financial & business strategy; sales & marketing; operations; systems design & implementation; management & board reporting; coaching & mentoring; investment appraisal; M & A activity & exit planning. Rowan obtained his Bcompt and Bcompt Honours Degrees from The University of South Africa. He is a qualified Chartered Management Accountant with the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (C I M A) U K.

Rowan’s sector expertise includes: information communication technology; professional services; property development; call centre; recruitment; hospitality; fresh produce; manufacture; banking, financial services and non profit.