Board

Paul is an investor who worked in the City of London for more than 25 years, most recently as Head of Stewardship and Sustainable Investment Strategy at Redington. He spent over a decade in various roles at Hermes, including helping create and build its Equity Ownership Service, a world-leading stewardship business. After a time as Head of Investment Affairs at the National Association of Pension Funds (now Pensions UK) he was hired by Aberdeen Asset Management as its first Global Head of Corporate Governance and Stewardship. He also spent four years as a member of the Committee of Reference for the Premier Miton Responsible UK Fund.

Paul was a member of the Capital Markets Advisory Committee of the IASB, the main formal grouping for investor input on the development of IFRS standards, from 2015 to 2020, and of the Financial Stability Board’s Enhanced Disclosure Task Force from 2012 to 2015. He was also a member of the Auditing Practices Board (which became the FRC’s Audit and Assurance Council) from 2007 to 2014, and in 2019 was on the secretariat for the Brydon Review into the Quality and Effectiveness of Audit. Paul is a Senior Adviser at technology startup Impactive Tech. He also writes a respected blog on fairness.

Paul is the UKEB's representative on the UK Sustainability Disclosure Technical Advisory Committee, established in May 2024 to provide technical analysis of the International Sustainability Standards Board’s corporate reporting standards, and advice to the UK government on their adoption.

Paul was a Non-Executive Member of the UKEB Board from March 2021 until his appointment as Executive Chair commenced on 11 September 2025. His term will end on 10 September 2028.

Phil is Chief Financial Officer of United Utilities Group PLC. In his previous 25 years with United Utilities he has held roles including Group Controller, with responsibility for the group’s financial reporting, and prior to that Group Treasurer, with responsibility for funding and financial risk management.

He is also a member of The 100 Group, where he is Chair of the Pensions Committee and a member of the Main Committee. He was previously a member of the Stakeholder Communications and Reporting Committee. 

He is both a chartered accountant and a Fellow of the Association of Corporate Treasurers. He was previously a member of EFRAG Technical Expert Group (2015 to 2017) and chaired the EFRAG Rate Regulated Activities Working Group (2017 to 2020).

Phil is serving his second term which will end on 14 March 2026.

Owen is a chartered accountant and Head of External Reporting at Travelex, the global travel money provider.

Owen gained his ACA qualification with Moore Stephens, spending time in the firm’s Monaco office before a short period in financial services audit with Deloitte. Since 2005 his career has been spent in commerce and industry. Notably, he has held roles at The Automobile Association where he worked in Group Finance, SABMiller plc where he was responsible for a number of legal entities with global trade and operations, and CooperVision, a US listed manufacturer with extensive UK & European operations.

In each of Owen’s roles, the preparation of financial statements and regulatory reporting has been a key focus. He has significant experience of managing the implementation of new accounting standards and a keen appreciation of the challenges and impact that significant reporting changes can have on an organisation.

Owen is serving his first term which will end on 28 February 2027.

Edward is a FTSE 100 plc and private equity backed Board member, senior executive, advisor and investor with particular expertise in technology, strategy, risk, governance and transformation across financial services and consumer industries worldwide.

He holds a number of Board and advisory roles, including as a FTSE 100 Non-Executive Director at F&C plc, the £5bn investment manager, Non-Executive Chairman at Gateley plc and Chair of the Board Audit and Risk Committee and Non-Executive Director of Ten Group plc, as well as advising fintech investors, Boards and management teams. Edward also serves on the Board of Asia House, the centre of expertise on investment, trade and policy, where he is Chair of the Investment Committee and the Audit and Risk Committee, and on the Board of the Payment Systems Regulator.

He was previously a global Managing Director at HSBC Bank plc, Director at Barclays Bank plc and Senior Advisor at Revolut, and has advised a wide range of companies worldwide, including at McKinsey & Company, in the UK and overseas.

Edward is serving his second term which will end on 31 August 2028.

Peter was an equity analyst, specialising in UK and European industrial companies, for almost 25 years. He spent 16 years at Deutsche Bank and 5 years at Jefferies. He was the lead or secondary analyst for over 15 initial public offerings in multiple countries. He initially trained as an engineer and spent his twenties in a variety of technical and sales roles in the defence industry.

Since leaving investment banking, Peter has written research reports for environmental charities, advised companies on capital market days and annual reports and run training courses for accounting firms. He has had a monthly column in Accounting and Business magazine since 2021 and has been an active member of the Corporate Reporting Forum since 2005. He has also presented at numerous accounting events, including a joint meeting of the FASB and IASB Boards.

Peter is an experienced user of accounts, having read and analysed thousands of annual reports from hundreds of companies over the years, and a passionate believer in efficient capital markets.

Peter is serving his first term which will end on 14 March 2028.

Tony Clifford was a partner in EY UK from 1991 to 2020. In the earlier part of his career, he was an auditor and advisor to banks and other financial institutions and served on the ICAEW Banking Committee. More recently, he headed up an accounting consulting group while leading EY’s UK accounting technical department and was a member of EY’s Global IFRS Policy Committee. For many years he was Co-Chair of EY’s global financial instruments accounting specialist network and was an advisor to ISDA’s European Accounting Committee, in which roles he played a significant role in the development and application of the accounting standards for financial instruments. He served as a consultant to EY until June 2023 and continues, independently, to provide financial instruments advisory services.

Tony also served on the PRA Taskforce on Disclosures about Expected Credit Losses, the Bank of England Risk Free Rate Accounting Task Force, and the BEIS Brexit Stakeholder Committee, which helped create the structure for the UK Endorsement Board. He is currently also a governor of an independent school.

Tony is serving his first term which will end on 28 February 2027. 

Mike is a former partner at KPMG, having retired in 2020 after a near 34 year career. His responsibilities in KPMG’s UK Technical Accounting Group included accounting and audit reporting and company law matters across the entire range of audits. He also had leadership responsibilities in KPMG’s Global Technical Group for business combinations, consolidation and intangibles. Overall, he dealt with complex technical issues across all sectors.  Mike retains a part-time consultant role with KPMG, assisting with programmes outside of the UK. 

Mike has previously served on a number of ICAEW volunteer technical committees, including its Technical Strategy Board and as Chair of its Business Law Committee. He is also an independent member of HM Treasury’s Financial Reporting Advisory Board which has a statutory, public interest role to advise HM Treasury on government financial reporting to meet the best possible standards by following, as far as possible, UK-Adopted International Accounting Standards. 

As a volunteer role in the local community, Mike is Board Chair of a 6-school Multi-Academy Trust.

Mike is serving his first term which will end on 14 March 2028.  

Amir is Associate Professor of Accounting at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford and Associate Member of the Oxford-Man Institute for Quantitative Finance. Amir’s research investigates the effects of financial and non-financial reporting on capital markets and the role of accounting standards. His work has been published in leading academic and practitioner journals and has influenced public policy and standard setting. He has co-authored and co-edited the book "Accounting for M&A". Prior to joining Saïd Business School, Amir held a position as Assistant Professor at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, and prior to that worked at Lehman Brothers in London. 

He received his PhD and MPhil from the University of Cambridge. He has taught and consulted for the asset management and banking industry globally and was also on the Academic Advisory Council at PanAgora Asset Management. He is currently European Advisor at Captrada LLC.

Amir is serving his second term which will end on 14 March 2027.

Michael is Professor of Practice at Imperial College Business School and a consultant to development agencies, working to deepen understanding of requirements specified for the preparation of international general purpose financial reports and fostering capacity to make, audit and regulate the judgments necessary to prepare them. He also performs compliance reviews of corporate financial statements for World Bank assessments of country compliance with financial reporting standards. He was Visiting Lecturer at London Business School from 2018 to 2020.

Michael is a chartered accountant. He qualified with EY in South Africa before joining the academic accounting world. He became the Associate Professor responsible for the financial accounting section of a South African university before moving to the UK to join the staff of the International Accounting Standards Committee Foundation (now IFRS Foundation) in London.

Michael led the IASB’s IFRS Education Initiative for almost a decade. During this time IFRS Accounting Standards became widely adopted across the world.

Michael has experience in a range of accounting education advisory roles. While leading the IFRS Education Initiative he served as a member of the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) International Accounting Education Standards Board (IAESB) Consultative Advisory Group (CAG) and the International Association for Accounting Education & Research (IAAER) Board of Advisors.  He subsequently served on the American Accounting Association (AAA) Membership Advisory Committee. Before that he served as a member of the AAA Education Committee.

Michael is serving his second term which will end on 14 March 2026.

Mark is a Visiting Professor of Business Economics at the University of Staffordshire in Stoke-on-Trent, where he grew up. Mark was a partner at EY from 2008 to 2021 and Chief Economist from 2010 to 2021, primarily in the Economics Advisory practice. He sponsored the EY ITEM Club’s macroeconomic forecasts and authored EY’s UK Attractiveness Survey on inward investment. During his time at EY, Mark was also a member of the UK Government’s Covid Strategy Recovery Taskforce, the DIT Trade and Advisory Group on Investment, and Chair of the Advisory Board of the Centre for Towns.

Prior to joining EY, Mark was a Strategy and Business Development Partner for wireless (mobile and all associated technologies) globally in IBM. He started his career as an economist at PwC (formerly Coopers & Lybrand), becoming a Partner in 2000.

During his time at EY and PwC, Mark worked extensively on projects involving accounting (he helped develop the UK regulatory accounting framework for telecommunications), valuations and taxation. He led the economic support to design EY’s approach to the implementation of the IFRS9 requirement for audits to incorporate macroeconomic scenarios and co-developed EY’s Economics for Audit programme.

Mark is a member of British Private Equity & Venture Capital Association’s Public Policy Panel, a Senior Fellow of the Institute of Place Management, a Trustee of the Challenger Academy, and a Trustee of the Claybody Theatre in Stoke-on-Trent. Mark is also an author and his first book, More Than a Game: Saving Football from Itself, was published in September 2021.

Mark is serving his first term which will end on 31 August 2028.

Cynthia is an experienced investor relations professional with expertise in financial performance, strategy, transformation, shareholder engagement, corporate governance and regulation, advising companies from AIM-listed to FTSE 100 and international companies. She has managed many capital markets transactions, initial public offerings and new listings on the LSE and NASDAQ, both in corporate roles and as Head of Investor Relations Services at JP Morgan Cazenove in corporate broking and equity research. Cynthia served for many years on the Policy and Regulation Committee of the Investor Relations Society, contributing to expert consultations on MIFID II, ESG, TCFD, liquidity challenges and accounting disclosures, and continues to mentor investor relations professionals.

Cynthia is a Board Member and Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee of Natural England and a Member of Defra’s Audit and Risk Committee. Previously, she was a Board Director and Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee of Orwell Housing Association. Cynthia also previously served as a Board Director and Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee of Port of Dover where she also served on the Nominations and Remuneration Committees. She was also a Board Director of the housing development subsidiary, Orwell Homes Limited.

Cynthia is serving her first term which will end on 31 August 2028.

Mike is a chartered accountant and, until retirement in 2013, spent almost all of his full-time working career with KPMG, having joined Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co in 1976. He spent most of his time as an Audit Partner specialising in banks, although latterly was responsible for risk management and ethics and independence at KPMG UK.

Until May 2023, Mike was Chair of the Audit Committee at Barclays PLC, whose Board he joined on his retirement from KPMG. He is currently Treasurer of The Scouts Association, Trustee and Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee at Charities Aid Foundation and is a Trustee at StepChange.

Mike has also held a number of other government related roles as a Non-Executive on the Cabinet Office Board and Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee (until December 2024), member of the Audit Committee at HM Treasury (2009 to 2015), Chair of the Government Internal Audit Agency (2014 to 2018) and as a member of the Charity Commission (2014 to 2020).

Mike was a member of the UK Accounting Standards Board from 2004 to 2010 and a member of the EFRAG Technical Expert Group from 2005 to 2016, in which capacity he also attended as an observer at meetings of the UK Accounting Standards Council.

Mike is serving his third term which will end on 14 March 2027.