Common questions.

Interim and fixed-term finance leadership, permanent Finance Director and Head of Finance appointments, and defined transformation or transaction projects: FP&A uplift, cost and margin programmes, M&A integration, transfer-pricing strategy and exit readiness. Fractional CFO arrangements also suit smaller founder-led businesses.

Pharmaceuticals and life sciences most deeply: GSK, Parexel, Chiron/Novartis, Shionogi and Accord. Alongside that, consumer and e-commerce from eleven years running my own direct-to-consumer business, telecommunications from O2, and complex owner-led, multi-entity environments through the Accord interim engagement, a family-owned global generics group across 22 entities.

By choice. It trades under its own consumer brand, which I keep separate from my professional practice. What can be said openly: it is a UK direct-to-consumer business selling through Amazon's US, UK and European marketplaces and Shopify, self-funded, with product, supply chain, marketing and finance run end to end since 2015. The name, the figures behind those published here, and the operational detail are shared at interview, under NDA where appropriate.

It sharpened everything a finance leader is for: cash, margin and customer economics, managed monthly from 2015 to the present day with my own capital on the outcome. The company still trades and is structured to run without my daily involvement, so an engagement, interim or permanent, gets my full attention without competition. What draws me back to organisations with real scale is the part I have missed most: building and leading teams. An interim mandate suits that by design, a defined brief, a reporting line and a handover date.

Whole-business mandates from mid-market upward, where multi-entity structure and governance complexity are real but a senior finance leader can still move the dial quickly. Within larger groups I take divisional, regional and European mandates: I have operated at billion-pound divisional scale, and building out a European arm is familiar ground. Smaller founder-led businesses work well on a fractional cadence.

A fixed number of days per week or month, agreed up front and reviewed as the business changes: enough presence to own the finance agenda and the board rhythm, without the cost of a full-time chair. Interim mandates are fuller commitments for a defined period; fractional arrangements typically run alongside a capable in-house team.

Interim availability is immediate, subject to current commitments. I am london-based: on-site or hybrid across London and the UK, remote for EU and US mandates, and available for regular European or international travel where a role needs it.

Engagements are contracted through Belmont London Ltd, a UK limited company, VAT registered. Both inside- and outside-IR35 arrangements are workable; the structure is agreed with the client or intermediary at the outset. Scope defines the rate; both are agreed once the brief is clear.

Straightforwardly. ACMA and CGMA sit on the CIMA and AICPA registers; Cranfield confirms the MBA. References are available on request, matched to the mandate.

Claude, Claude Code, Claude in Excel and ChatGPT are embedded in my analysis, forecasting and modelling practice, with every output validated against source data. On client work, confidential data is only processed within whatever AI arrangements the client has approved: enterprise controls, private deployments, or not at all. The fluency transfers; the data governance is the client's call.