Simi Bains

Fraud Liaison Manager, D&B UK & Ireland

Simi has been a fraud liaison manager at D&B for the last year after having spent the previous 8 years working for a leading asset finance provider developing a vast amount of experience working in various roles including Legal and Fraud Prevention.

bainss@dnb.com
T: +44 (0)1628 492488

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Cormac Costelloe

Managing Director, CIT Vendor Finance, Europe

Cormac Costelloe was appointed Managing Director of CIT’s Vendor Finance Business unit in 2006. Based in Dublin in CIT’s integrated European Service Centre, Cormac is responsible for leading a business focused on the delivery of vendor finance solutions across the European equipment finance market, where CIT has an established and significant presence, particularly in the Technology and Office Equipment sector.

Cormac joined CIT in September 2002 as Chief Credit Officer and in this role was responsible for all aspects if CIT’s European risk function. Before coming to CIT, he held senior-level positions over a period of fourteen years in Business Development, Corporate Finance and Risk at ABN-Amro, ING Barings, BNP Paribas and Hewlett-Packard, where he was responsible for the EMEA Credit Function and was part of the team that set up Hewlett-Packard’s captive bank in Ireland’s International Financial Services Centre.

Cormac holds a BA degree in Commerce from University College Dublin and a Masters of Business Studies from Smurfit Business School at University College Dublin.

cormac.costelloe@cit.com
T: +353 1 250 2784

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Andrew Denton

Sales and Marketing Director, CHP Consulting

Andrew Denton is Director of Sales and Marketing at CHP Consulting. He joined the company in 1995 and has led systems implementation projects for a number of CHP clients, including Royal Bank of Scotland, HBOS, National Australia Group, ACCBank and Dresdner Kleinwort; in addition he managed the CHP ALFA Systems launch in North America.

Denton is a frequent speaker on leasing industry technology matters, having spoken at ELFA, Euromoney, FLA, Leasing Life and Alta Group conferences and events. He also writes features on leasing technology and process issues for various industry journals, including the World Leasing Yearbook, Leasing Life and Consultant’s Conspectus.

An earlier stage of Denton’s career was spent at Schlumberger, where he specialised in business process improvement programs. He holds a degree in Computing in Business from Brunel University.

andrew.denton@chp.co.uk
T: +44 (0)207 588 1800

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Richard Guilbert

Partner, Invigors LLP

During Richard’s 25 years in the leasing industry he has been Chief Operating Officer of CIT Europe, European General Manager of Dell Financial Services and has also held financial and general management positions with bank-owned and independent leasing companies, where his roles included functional responsibility for risk management.

Since joining Invigors as a founding partner in 2005, Richard has worked with a wide range of lessors, captives and manufacturers in analysing, evaluating, re-shaping and modelling their businesses for future growth and development.

richard.guilbert@invigors.com
T: +44 (0)845 0031000

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Peter Hunt

Partner, Invigors LLP

Career history includes European Director of Strategy & Commercial Development for the GATX Capital, Manager of Corporate Strategy & Projects at Lombard and CRM Programme Director at Friends Provident, a FTSE-100 financial services business.

Peter has broad strategy and commercial experience, including early stage management of an international asset finance business and many market development initiatives.

A large part of Peter’s work involves working with significant asset finance companies in reshaping their business for growth. Over the course of the last two years, Peter has been involved in some of the largest restructuring exercises in the UK asset finance industry.

Regularly published in the leasing press, Peter was published in World Leasing Yearbook 2010 on the subject of post credit crunch business models.

peter.hunt@invigors.com
T: +44 (0)845 0031000

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Elliot Lennick

Chief Executive North, East & Western Europe, MAN Finance

CEO of MAN Financial Services, Elliot is responsible for North,East and Western Europe. He is also a member of the International Management board. Elliot joined MAN in August 1999 as Managing Director of the captive. The brief was to create a centrally funded captive, and cancel the then current vendor relationship.

Launching the newly formed captive in March 2000, the company quickly achieved its early objectives. Since then MAN Financial Services has grown and Elliot has responsibility for over 50% of the captive’s companies.

He is Chairman of the recently formed Captives Forum and is a committee member of the commercial vehicle sector of the BVRLA.

elliot.lennick@man.eu

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Manuela Pachoinig

Head of Vendors & Cross Border, UniCredit Leasing S.p.A.

Manuela has worked for almost 20 years in the leasing industry and has focused in her career mainly on Central and Eastern European countries. She was actively involved in developing leasing in several of these countries as well as setting up companies in Romania and Slovenia.

She was responsible until 2008 for the Sales activities of BACA-Leasing in the CEE countries and then took over the development of Vendor Business for the UniCredit Leasing Group for 17 countries including Germany, Austria and Italy.

manuela.pachoinig@unicreditleasing.at
T: +43 1 58808-4327

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Willie Paterson

Formerly Director of Commercial Asset Finance, Alliance & Leicester plc

Now a banking industry veteran of over twenty years, Willie Paterson entered the sector when he left school and joined a local branch of the Clydesdale Bank.

After progressing quickly through the various roles within branch banking, he elected to use some of the experiences gained in the family haulage business and joined Scottish Discount Company Ltd, an independent division of Lloyds Bowmaker in Scotland - specialising in asset finance of commercial vehicles, bus & coach and motor cars. It was there during the last real UK recession in the early 1990’s that he gained a thorough grounding in all aspects of asset finance including administration, sales and most importantly, a two-year secondment within the arrears & credit control department to learn what happens when the job isn’t done properly.

Following spells working for Forward Trust and National Australia Bank in corporate and vendor finance roles, he joined Alliance & Leicester in 2002 in a senior management role, to establish a group of asset specialist finance businesses with a focus on residual value lending. During the last six years Alliance & Leicester developed highly focussed operating lease, contract hire and fleet management businesses supported by dedicated Used Asset Retail sites, fleet engineers and rental managers and established market-leading positions within the Commercial Vehicle and Bus and Coach sectors.

Following its acquisition by Santander, Willie has recently left Alliance & Leicester to focus on new opportunities in and around the Operating Lease market.

william@assetallianceltd.co.uk
T: +44 (0)7920 548973

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Matthew Porton

Managing Director, Genesis Capital (Finance & Leasing) Ltd

In 1992 Matthew joined Forward Trust straight from University, moving on to Barclays Mercantile then The Systems House Group (now Syscap) where he became Sales Manager. In 1997 he founded Genesis with two partners who he subsequently bought out in 1999 and 2005. At its peak Genesis was funding just under £30m per annum and employing 25 people. In 2009 Matthew liquidated Genesis Capital Limited and started Genesis Capital (Finance & Leasing) Limited to continue its broking activities.

Matthew supplemented his degree in Business Systems Analysis with a Postgraduate Diploma in Marketing (CIM). In 1999 he was the Winner of Sir Hugh Ferguson Jones Prize in the FLA exams that year for the highest mark in Elements of Finance & Leasing. In 2005 he gained the Certificate in Company Direction from the IOD and in the same year he started mentoring new start, high technology businesses, as “Merlin Mentor” via Finance South East and the South East England Development Agency.

mgp@genesiscapital.co.uk
T: +44 (0)208 288 6262

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Paul Sheeran

Managing Director, Hewlett-Packard Financial Services, EMEA

Paul Sheeran is the Managing Director of HP Financial Services in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), as well as Managing Director of HP International Bank plc. In these roles, Paul has responsibility for leading a pan-European business providing asset management and financial services to HP’s customers across the Region.

Paul joined HP in 1998 as Head of Audit & Compliance for their newly created European bank. The bank was established to allow HP Financial Services to offer a complete of financial services to customers on a pan-European basis. In July 2002, Paul was named Managing Director of the bank.

Prior to joining HP, Paul worked as a senior regulator with the Central Bank of Ireland for 3 years and previously held senior positions with LloydsTSB Bank in the UK within their Credit and Operations Divisions.

Paul holds a Masters Degree in Economics from University College Dublin and is a member of the Chartered Institute of Bankers.

paul.sheeran@hp.com

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Joanne Smith

Chief Executive & Creative Officer, The Consulting Consortium

Joanne Smith has worked in Financial Services for over 20 years. Her expertise is in compliance related services since 1990 and has worked in a number of Financial Services Companies, including Royal Insurance, HBOS and KPMG, as well as the Financial Services Authority. She has an MBA from Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees in Paris. In 2000 she founded The Consulting Consortium (TCC) which specialises in providing compliance services, training and resources.

TCC is an award winning compliance consultancy. TCC's expertise covers all matters relating to FSA regulation and includes not just consultancy but also tools, training and recruitment. TCC's excellent reputation has been built on a strong ethos of only ever giving business-ready advice, ensuring the strongest possible position for their clients.

jsmith@theconsultingconsortium.com
T: +44 (0)20 7645 8808

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Dave Sowden

Chief Executive, The Micropower Council

Dave Sowden was appointed in 2003 as the first Chief Executive of the Micropower Council, an organisation he co-founded with Lord Ezra consisting of over 25 companies, Trade Associations and environmental groups to advocate the role that small scale low and zero carbon technologies can play in the Energy Policy Mix. Since 2001, he has also run the UK government’s work programme to remove regulatory barriers to the uptake of microgeneration.

He is also the founder and owner of JDS Associates, a consultancy specialising in strategies for regulatory and public policy change in the sustainable energy sector, and in 2006 he was appointed by the Energy Minister to a board of government advisers on renewable energy policy. His early career was spent in the UK electricity industry, specialising in regulation and government policy, both in the UK and in Brussels.

He is an electrical engineer by training, holds an honours degree in Electrical Engineering, an MBA from the University of Warwick and is a Member of the Institute of Directors, the Institute of Engineering and Technology, and the Energy Institute.

dave.sowden@micropower.co.uk

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Professor Colin Tourick

Chief Executive Officer, Aisby & Company Limited

Colin is a chartered accountant who moved into sales, then marketing, then general management. He has spent 30 years in the UK asset finance and vehicle leasing industries. He has been Chief Accountant of Lease Plan UK, Director and General Manager of Commercial Union Vehicle Finance Corporate, Finance Director of BNP Paribas Lease Group and Managing Director of CitiCapital Fleet.

Colin is a Chartered Accountant and a Certified Accountant. He also holds a Masters Degree in Finance and Accounting from the London School of Economics (University of London) and is a member of the Institute of Car Fleet Management. He speaks frequently at leasing-related seminars and conferences and is routinely quoted in the press as an authority on the vehicle leasing industry. He has had monthly columns in ‘LeasingLife’, ‘Fleet Management’, ‘Fleet Week’ and ‘Motor Finance’. He is CEO of Aisby & Company and specialises in improving the pricing of asset finance businesses. He is also the Visiting Professor at the Centre for Automotive Management at the University of Buckingham Business School.

colin.tourick@aisby.com

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Dennis Turner

Chief Economist, HSBC Bank plc

Dennis Turner is the Chief Economist of HSBC Bank plc in the City. His role involves advising lending bankers on economic trends not only at national level, but also on industries and regions.

Before joining Midland Bank in 1978, he worked for four years in Whitehall, for the National Economic Development Office. This was during the Labour government’s Industrial Strategy Initiative, which was an attempt to improve the performance of the UK’s manufacturing sector.

His first job on leaving university (Swansea and University College, London) was as an economist for a national trade union. Here he was responsible for the preparation of pay claims, arbitration cases and the union’s submission to various statutory bodies set up under Edward Heath’s Industrial Relations Act.

His principal interests outside office hours are music and football. He is a director of Fulham Football Club and his publications include the definitive history of Fulham, the need for an Industrial Investment Bank in the UK, analyses of the textile and construction industries, and critiques on the recordings of Van Morrison, Joe Cocker and Ray Charles.

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Ian Willetts

Divisional Director, Close Asset Finance Broker Division

Ian worked in Lombard Business Finance for twenty years, incorporating different sales and leadership roles, including managing a Corporate Finance Team for seven very successful years. Latterly, with the establishment of the Lombard Indirect Channel Ian took the role as Head of Strategy and Business.

Development with revenues of c£880m.

Following a brief spell as Head of Business Development of the Broker division of HBoS, Ian is now Divisional Director of the Broker Division of Close Asset Finance Group.

iwilletts@closeasset.co.uk

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