The Board
David Walker
Head of Investor Relations - British Land
Chair of the IR Society
Chair of the Conference Committee
Chair of the Nominations Committee
David Walker qualified as a Chartered Accountant with PriceWaterhouseCoopers within their Banking & Capital Markets division in London. Following this, he spent over seven years in the city at Deutsche Bank where he held a variety of roles within the Corporate Finance division, including Business Development and most recently as a Vice President in the UK Corporate Broking team. Since leaving Deutsche Bank David has worked at Hays PLC, the FTSE250 listed specialist recruitment group, where he headed up the Investor Relations & Corporate Development team, taking responsibility for all aspects of shareholder and other stakeholder communications. In October 2017 he joined British Land as Head of Investor Relations. David is currently Chair of The IR Society.
Douglas Radcliffe
Group Investor Relations Director - Lloyds Banking Group
Deputy Chair of The IR Society
Interim Treasurer of The IR Society
Douglas heads up the Investor Relations team at Lloyds Banking Group having been a senior member of the team at Lloyds Bank and subsequently Lloyds Banking Group for the last ten years.
During this time he has been involved in all the normal Investor Relations activities including the development of the investment proposition, briefing of institutional investors and the development and production of corporate results and announcements. In addition he has been integrally involved in all the corporate actions and transactions undertaken by the Group during this period including the acquisition of HBOS, the capital raisings and the various business disposals.
Prior to joining the Investor Relations team Douglas held management positions within Group Strategy, Group Risk and Private Banking having initially joined Lloyds Bank on the graduate development programme.
Douglas is also a Board member of the IR Society
James Eves
Vice President, Client Manager - Deutsche Bank Depositary Receipts
Company Secretary of the IR Society
James has over 20 years’ experience in financial services; prior to joining Deutsche Bank's Depositary Receipts business in 2015 he managed a portfolio of major British and Irish issuer clients for BNY Mellon’s Depositary Receipts business for 4 years. Prior to that he spent 11 years at Computershare, working in partnership with several major British ordinary share registry clients. James has a degree in Business Studies with Combined Sciences and is an Associate of the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators. James was appointed Company Secretary of the IR Society in 2014.
Laura Hayter
CEO - IR Society
Laura is CEO at the IR Society. Formerly Head of Policy and Communications, Laura has been with the Society for more than nine years. Laura has over 18 years’ experience in the Investor Relations industry. She joined The IR Society in 2011, and among other roles, was formerly a director at the IR consultancy, Taylor Rafferty, providing IR advisory services to blue chip clients, both in London and New York. She graduated from the University of Leeds, with an honours degree in German and management studies.
Ross Hawley
Independent
Chair of the Education Committee
Ross is an experienced IRO with both an in-house and advisory background. Originally in equity capital markets banking, Ross has over 20 years of in-house corporate experience, including FTSE100 businesses such as aerospace and defence business Rolls-Royce, where he was Assistant Director of IR; and Man Group plc, the alternative investment manager, where he was involved in a very wide range of capital raisings and corporate transactions. Ross has also set up and led the IR function for smaller companies including UK-listed Playtech Ltd, NASDAQ-listed Edwards Group, and UK-listed PageGroup. He is a graduate of Cambridge University.
Claire Lavery
Claire Lavery, Executive Director, Europe & Asia - Rivel Research Group
Claire leads Rivel's business in the UK, Europe and Asia, responsible for growth and profitability in these regions. Being Rivel’s first recruit outside the US, Claire extended Rivel’s reputation across the Atlantic establishing our position as the leading ‘global’ provider of perception research. With her experienced team, she continues to increase our loyal client base across two continents. She is a consultant on client projects, providing in depth strategic analysis and presents insights and recommendations to senior management teams and Boards of Directors. Her experience spans a cross section of companies of varying market caps, industries and geographies. She is also a regular guest speaker at investor relations events across Europe, sharing insights on buy-side expectations and IR best practices.
Prior to joining Rivel, she was the International Sales Director at a leading investor relations publication, but before stepping into the world of investor relations, Claire spent 10 years in the legal market working closely with world-leading global law firms and the general counsel of the FTSE 100.
Claire sits on the Society’s Best Practice Committee and Conference Committee.
Alison Owers
Chief Executive Officer, EMEA - Orient Capital
Chair of the Membership Committee
Alison joined Orient Capital in June 2010 bringing a wealth of investor relations and analytical experience. Since she joined she has been instrumental in building the brand of Orient Capital initially in the UK, from forging partnerships with numerous brokers and advisers, to latterly developing the Orient Capital and D.F. King brands across EMEA. As part of ASX listed, the Link Group, she has P&L responsibility for the Corporate Markets business. Alison joined Orient Capital from Capita where for 7 years she was Head of IR Services, than latterly Managing Director of their IR Services business. Previously Alison managed the UK Client reporting team at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, specialising in shareholder analytics for UK large/mid cap companies. Alison has a French and German Languages degree from Kingston University and started her career as a translator before working in investor relations for a mining company in Canada. She was appointed to the IR Society Board in 2014 and is responsible for chairing the Membership Committee.
Helen Parris
Director of Investor Relations - G4S
Helen Parris is Director of Investor Relations responsible for the Group’s communication with the investment community, providing stock market analysts and shareholders with quality information on a timely basis so the Group can be assessed and valued appropriately by the market. Helen has been voted top IR professional in the Institutional Investor and Extel Pan European Awards for the Support and Business Services Sector. She is a trustee of the G4S plc £2.3bn pension fund.
Helen has 27 years of City experience, covering fund management, investor relations (for media, security and oil and gas companies) and stock-broking. Prior to this appointment, Helen was Investor Relations Manager at BG Group, the FTSE 100 oil and gas company. Helen has a BSc in Accounting and Financial Analysis from Warwick University and is a Member of the Society of Investment Analysts.
Sallie Pilot
Director - Insight & Engagement, Black Sun
Chair of the Best Practice Committee
Deputy Chair of the Policy Committee
With over 20 years experience in corporate communications, Sallie is responsible for setting the strategic integrity of Black Sun’s Insights and external engagement. Active in industry dialogue, regularly engaging with government, regulators and professional bodies to drive the debate in better communications and corporate reporting, she is member of the Financial Reporting Council's Financial Reporting Lab Steering Committee, a board member of the Investor Relations Society as well as the Chair of the Best Practice Committee, and a member of the Communications Group at Accounting for Sustainability.
Sallie is committed to ongoing research on enhanced disclosure and transparency and engagement with wider stakeholders and monitors the FTSE 100 and other global comparators in the pursuit of best practice communications. Sallie has also provided strategic corporate communications consultancy for a range of UK and international clients such as: Coca-Cola Hellenic, DBS, HSBC, Kingfisher, Rio Tinto, Tullow Oil and United Overseas Bank.
Fraser Thorne
Founder and Chief Executive - Edison Investment Research
Fraser founded Edison in 2003. Before that, he ran Newton Investment Management’s UK smaller company fund - a top decile performer. Fraser has broad experience in equity markets working closely with Edison’s operations in Asia-Pacific, Germany as well as the UK. He holds an MBA, and is a member of the CFA.
