Gresham House
Strategic plc Gresham House
Strategic plc

Richard works in our Strategic Public Equity team. He entered fund management 20 years ago and is a Chartered Accountant. After initially starting at a hedge fund, he moved to Société Générale Asset Management where he was made Head of UK Small Companies after becoming a CFA charter holder in 2002.

Richard then became a Founding Partner of River and Mercantile Asset Management in 2006, responsible for the top quartile performing UK Small company and UK Income Funds and helping grow the business to over £2bn AUM. In 2013 he joined Majedie Asset Management to initially co-manage and then solely run the small companies investments within the flagship UK Equity Service. These investments peaked at over £900m, while overall firm AUM doubled to £15bn during his tenure.

Tony has been Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Gresham House plc since December 2014. He chairs the Investment Committees of Gresham House plc and Gresham House Strategic plc. He led the management buy-in and established a new management team that transformed the firm from an investment trust into the AIM listed specialist asset manager it is today.

Tony has a long track record of investing and advising numerous public and private equity businesses. From 2002 to 2011, he established and grew SVG Investment Managers before being asked to lead SVG Advisors (formerly Schroder Ventures, London), the global private equity arm of Schroders, as CEO. He started his career at Phillips & Drew Fund Management (later UBS Global Asset Management), one of the UK’s most prominent value investment firms with £60bn in assets under management at its peak. He was also a member of the UK Equity Investment Committee with responsibility for managing over £1.5bn of UK equities.

Tony has over 25 years of experience and holds a Master of Arts in Management Studies from the University of Cambridge (where he was also a junior rugby international and Blue).

Laurence works alongside Richard Staveley in the Strategic Equity team, looking at both public and private equity transactions across a range of sectors for Gresham House Strategic. He also supports fundraising and investment activities for our Real Assets division.

Laurence has a Bachelor’s Degree in Politics with Economics from the University of Warwick. During his studies, Laurence interned at Rothschild & Co, working on the Mergers and Acquisitions Team in the industrial sector, and at Barclays Capital on the equities trading floor

Paul is responsible for corporate finance in the Strategic Public Equity team at Gresham House and joined in 2020.

He was previously at HD Capital Partners (Founder), WH Ireland, Sigma Capital plc and PwC.

He has over 24 years’ corporate finance experience and holds a BSc in Geography from Durham University.

David was the former Chairman and CEO of Guinness Mahon, Merchant Bank, (now part of Investec). Between 1981-1989, David was a Managing Director of Samuel Montagu, Midland Montagu and Midland Global Corporate Banking (now HSBC). David was previously a Managing Director of CSFB and its predecessor companies (1969-1981). David is currently a Non-Executive Director of Fundsmith Emerging Equities Trust, Chairman of Illustrated London News and Coeus Software.

He is Chairman of The Bryanston Foundation and a member of the Finance and Investment Committee of the Berkshire Community Foundation. He is a Fellow of Kings College London of which he was formerly Hon Treasurer.

David was appointed Chairman of Gresham House Strategic on it’s creation in 2015.

Charles was an executive with SPARK, the predecessor to Gresham House Strategic plc, from 2001 to 2005 managing early stage technology investments in Aspex, Mergermarket, Kobalt, and Pricerunner. Since leaving that executive role 15 years ago, Charles has worked at Virgin Group building Virgin’s mobile phone and related ventures around the globe, and also at Lloyds Banking Group working on restructuring the bank’s customers, and also the Group’s strategy.

Charles is now with SS&C Technologies Inc a US quoted technology and services business supporting the asset management industry with responsibility for sales and support of the firm’s process automation software. Charles was appointed to the Board on 15 September 2004, and Charles chairs the audit committee.

Helen has an MA in Economics from the University of Cambridge and an MBA from INSEAD Business School. After working in investment banking Helen spent nearly 8 years at 3i plc focusing on MBOs and growth capital investments. She later co-founded Matrix Private Equity (now Mobeus) in early 2000. She subsequently became Managing Director of Matrix Private Equity before moving to take on a portfolio of Non-Executive Director roles in 2005. She is currently a Non-Executive Director of The Income & Growth VCT plc, Mobeus Income & Growth 4 VCT plc, British Smaller Companies VCT plc and North East Finance (Holdco) Ltd. Helen was appointed to the Board on 17 December 2009.

Ken Lever is Chairman of Biffa plc and RPS Group plc and Non-Executive Director of Blue Prism plc and Vertu Motors plc. Ken was previously Chief Executive of Xchanging plc and during his career has held listed company executive board positions with Tomkins
plc, Albright and Wilson plc, Alfred McAlpine plc and private equity owned Numonyx BV.

In his early career Ken qualified as a Chartered Accountant and became a partner in Arthur Andersen. Until 2014 Ken was a member of the UK Accounting Standards Board. He graduated from Manchester University with a degree in Management Sciences.

Tony has been Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Gresham House plc since December 2014. He chairs the Investment Committees of Gresham House plc and Gresham House Strategic plc. He led the management buy-in and established a new management team that transformed the firm from an investment trust into the AIM listed specialist asset manager it is today.

Tony has a long track record of investing and advising numerous public and private equity businesses. From 2002 to 2011, he established and grew SVG Investment Managers before being asked to lead SVG Advisors (formerly Schroder Ventures, London), the global private equity arm of Schroders, as CEO. He started his career at Phillips & Drew Fund Management (later UBS Global Asset Management), one of the UK’s most prominent value investment firms with £60bn in assets under management at its peak. He was also a member of the UK Equity Investment Committee with responsibility for managing over £1.5bn of UK equities.

Tony has over 25 years of experience and holds a Master of Arts in Management Studies from the University of Cambridge (where he was also a junior rugby international and Blue).

30 years VC & banking experience. Founded Spark in 1995. Former Investment Committee member at Brandt’s, Credit Suisse, Bank of Montreal and Mitsubishi Finance London. Start-up investor/director of lastminute.com, mergermarket.com, Chairman of Kobalt Music, notonthehighstreet.com, ARC, MAID, amongst others.

Bruce was appointed Chairman of the world’s leading insurance market, Lloyd’s of London, in June 2017 and is also Chairman of Moneysupermarket Group and a Vice Chairman of Banco Santander. He was a Non-Executive Director of JLT Group plc from 2016 to 2017, prior to which he was Non-Executive Chairman of Aon UK Ltd from 2012 to 2015, Senior Independent Director of Catlin Group Ltd from 2010 to 2014 and Chief Executive for Marsh UK and Europe from 2003 to 2006.

He was also a Senior Independent Director of Close Brothers Group plc from 2006 to 2014. He previously worked at JP Morgan for 18 years in a number of senior roles and was Managing Partner of 3i Group plc’s Quoted Private Equity Division from 2007 to 2009. He is President of the Chartered Management Institute.

Graham is the CFO of Escape Hunt and is experienced in fund management and in building both corporate advisory and asset management businesses. Formerly the Fund Manager of Gresham House Strategic. Graham spent six years as a senior executive at PayPoint plc, most recently as director of strategic planning and corporate development.

He was also executive chairman and president of PayByPhone, a multi-national division of PayPoint operating out of Canada, the UK and France between 2010-2014. Graham began his career in audit and corporate finance at Deloitte and Cazenove, and holds an MA in Economics from the University of Cambridge.

Ken is Managing Director, Public Equity, and leads the investment team managing public equity investments. He is lead manager for LF Gresham House UK Micro Cap Fund, LF Gresham House UK Multi Cap Income Fund, Strategic Equity Capital plc and manages AIM listed portfolios on behalf of the Baronsmead VCTs. Ken graduated from Brasenose College, Oxford, before qualifying as a Chartered Accountant with KPMG. He was an equity research analyst with Commerzbank and then Evolution Securities prior to spending the past 12 years as a Fund Manager at Livingbridge and now Gresham House specialising in smaller companies.