Board
Members are appointed by the Chair, with a right of veto from the Secretary of State for BEIS following an open competition. Board membership represents a diversity of backgrounds and expertise.
Chair
Pauline Wallace
Executive Chair
Pauline Wallace was appointed as inaugural Chair of the UKEB in September 2020 and as permanent Chair in September 2022.
Pauline is a chartered accountant with over thirty years’ experience in accounting standards, including as a national standard setter in the UK and Hong Kong. She subsequently became an accounting technical partner, initially with Arthur Andersen and subsequently with PricewaterhouseCoopers, where she established and led the global financial instruments team during the transition of EU listed companies to IFRS and through the global financial crisis. She was PwC’s UK head of public policy and regulatory affairs until her retirement from the firm in 2013.
Pauline is currently Deputy Chair of the Determinations Panel of the Pensions Regulator and previously served two terms as a member of the Regulatory Decisions Committee of the Financial Conduct Authority.
Pauline was a member of the UK Accounting Standards Board from 2010 to 2016 and a member of the ICAEW’s Regulatory Board from 2015 to 2019.
Corporates
Mike Ashley
Non-Executive Member
Mike Ashley was appointed as an inaugural Member of the UKEB on 15 March 2021.
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 the Chair of the Audit Committee at Barclays PLC, whose Board he joined on his retirement from KPMG. He is currently the Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee of the Cabinet Office and Treasurer of The Scouts Association. Mike is also a Trustee and Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee at Charities Aid Foundation and is a Trustee at StepChange.
He has also held a number of other government related roles as a member of the Audit Committee at HM Treasury (2009-15), Chair of the Government Internal Audit Agency (2014-18) and as a member of the Charity Commission (2014-20).
Mike was a member of the UK Accounting Standards Board from 2004 to 2010 and a member of the Technical Expert Group of EFRAG from 2005 to 2016, in which capacity he also attended as an observer at meetings of the UK Accounting Standards Council.
Phil Aspin
Non-Executive Member
Phil Aspin was appointed as an inaugural Member of the UKEB on 15 March 2021.
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 currently chair’s the pensions committee and is a member of the main committee. He was previously a member of the stakeholder communications and reporting committee at the 100 Group.
He is both a chartered accountant and a Fellow of the Association of Corporate Treasurers. He was previously a member of EFRAG TEG (2015-2017) and chaired the EFRAG Rate Regulated Activities Working Group (2017-2020).
Investors/Users
Paul Lee
Non-Executive Member
Paul Lee was appointed as an inaugural Member of the UKEB on 15 March 2021.
Paul is an investor who has worked in the City of London for more than 20 years and is now Head of Stewardship and Sustainable Investment Strategy at Redington, the investment consultancy. He spent more than a decade in various roles at Hermes, including helping create and build its Equity Ownership Service (EOS), a world-leading stewardship business. After a time as Head of Investment Affairs at the NAPF (National Association of Pension Funds, now the PLSA) he was hired by Aberdeen Asset Management as its first global head of corporate governance and stewardship. He left following the merger with Standard Life and spent three years as an independent consultant on ESG and stewardship matters, mainly advising investors on enhancing their approach.
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. 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. He is currently a member of the committee of reference for the Premier Miton Ethical Fund and writes a respected blog on fairness.
Liz Murrall
Non-Executive Member
Liz Murrall was appointed as an inaugural Member of the UKEB on 15 March 2021.
Liz is a chartered accountant with expertise in financial reporting, audit and governance. For over 18 years, until her retirement at the end of 2020, she was an Executive Director at the UK’s Investment Association (the representative body for the UK asset management industry) representing institutional investors’ interests on listed companies’ governance and reporting requirements. One of her main responsibilities was to ensure that the reports and accounts that companies report to the market meet investors’ needs.
From 2013, Liz was a member of the FRC Corporate Reporting Council and was appointed chair early in 2019. She was also a member of the FRC Codes and Standards Committee, a sub-committee of the FRC Board, responsible for corporate governance, accounting, auditing and actuarial standards in the UK (from 2014). She stood down from these two roles at the end of 2020 when the FRC's governance reforms took effect. From 2008 to 2013, Liz was a member of the International Accounting Standards Board’s IFRS Advisory Council providing strategic advice to the IASB to achieve harmonised accounting standards globally.
Liz is currently a co-opted member of the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea Council’s Audit and Transparency Committee, chair of the PIOB's Nominations Committee and a non-executive director of a corporate trustee.
Edward Knapp
Non-Executive Member
Edward Knapp was appointed as a Member of the UKEB on 1 September 2022.
Edward is a FTSE 250 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 250 Non-Executive Director at F&C plc, the £4.5bn investment manager, Chairman of the plc Board Risk & Compliance Committee, Non-Executive Director and member of the Audit Committee for the £15bn asset Mattioli Woods plc wealth management, as well as advising FinTech investors, Boards and management teams. He also serves on the Board of Asia House, the centre of expertise on investment, trade and policy, where he is also Chairman of the Investment Committee.
He was previously a 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 previously at McKinsey & Company in the UK and overseas.
Accounting Firms
Giles Mullins
Non-Executive Member
Giles Mullins was appointed as an inaugural Member of the UKEB on 15 March 2021.
Giles is a Chartered Accountant and Partner at Grant Thornton UK LLP. He leads the firm’s Financial Accounting Advisory team which supports clients with financial reporting expertise or on demand loan solutions and is a member of the global Grant Thornton Financial Reporting Advisory Board.
He also serves on the ICAEW’s Financial Reporting Faculty Board and the Auditing and Accounting Expert Group at the Quoted Companies Alliance.
Sandra Thompson
Non-Executive Member
Sandra Thompson was appointed as an inaugural Member of the UKEB on 15 March 2021.
Sandra is a chartered accountant with over thirty years’ experience in accounting standards, including as a national standard setter in the UK and leading the financial instruments team at the IASB in the period up to the adoption of IFRS by the EU in 2001.
She subsequently became an accounting technical partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers, where she led the UK financial instruments team during the global financial crisis and subsequent recovery, before moving to lead the global financial instruments team through the adoption of IFRS 9 (the new financial instruments standard), IFRS 16 (the new leasing standard) and the finalisation of IFRS 17 (the new insurance standard). She was a prominent member of PwC’s global accounting leadership team, leading its strategic work on communications, until her retirement from the firm in 2020.
Sandra also acts as an executive coach and has a number of voluntary roles in her local community.
Academics
Amir Amel-Zadeh
Non-Executive Member
Amir Amel-Zadeh was appointed as an inaugural Member of the UKEB on 15 March 2021.
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.
Michael Wells
Non-Executive Member
Michael Wells was appointed as an inaugural Member of the UKEB on 15 March 2021.
Michael is Professor of Practice at Imperial College Business School and a World Bank Group consultant, working to deepen understanding of international financial reporting requirements and fostering capacity to make, audit and regulate the judgments necessary to apply 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 Ernst & Young (now 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 International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Education Initiative for almost a decade. During this time IFRS 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.
Economist
Robin Cohen
Non-Executive Member
Robin Cohen was appointed as a Member of the UKEB on 1 September 2022.
Robin is an economist. He is currently a Panel Member of the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority. He also provides consultancy to a range of clients with a focus on the energy sector.
In June 2018, Robin retired as a Vice President of Charles River Associates where he worked across the energy and competition practices. He was previously a Partner at Deloitte from 2002 to 2013 where he led the Economic Consulting practice. He has also been a Partner at Arthur Andersen (Business Consulting, Strategy Finance and Economics) from 1999 to 2002.
Robin has over 30 years of experience in economic consulting, providing advice to governments, regulators and corporates across multiple sectors including energy, water and financial services. He has acted as the independent expert in regulatory and commercial disputes in the context of regulatory proceedings, litigation and arbitration.
Other
Kathryn Cearns OBE
Non-Executive Member
Kathryn Cearns was appointed as an inaugural Member of the UKEB on 15 March 2021.
Kathryn is a chartered accountant with extensive senior level experience in both the public and private sectors. For many years she was the consultant accountant for an international law firm.
Kathryn currently holds a number of non-executive appointments, including Chair of the Press Recognition Panel and Vice-Chair of The Property Ombudsman. She is a non-executive director of National Highways and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. She is a member of the DfT Group Audit and Risk Committee and a lay member of the BMA Audit and Risk Committee. Kathryn is also a non-executive director at Emperor Design Consultants, an employee-owned company.
Kathryn’s past roles include being a member of the External Audit Committee at the International Monetary Fund, non-executive board member at Companies House, non-executive director of Crossrail (and subsequently DfT Special Representative on the Elizabeth Line Committee), Chair of the Financial Reporting Advisory Board to HM Treasury, non-executive director at the UK Supreme Court, Chair of the Office of Tax Simplification at HM Treasury, Trustee of Royal British Legion Industries, Trustee of the Royal Mencap Society, and Chair of the ICAEW Financial Reporting Committee.
Katherine Coates
Non-Executive Member
Katherine Coates was appointed as an inaugural Member of the UKEB on 15 March 2021.
Katherine Coates was, until May 2021, a Partner and Head of the Global Insurance Sector Group at Clifford Chance LLP with over 30 years' experience advising on a broad range of transactions and on corporate, regulatory, governance and commercial matters in the insurance and wider financial services sector in the UK and elsewhere. She remains Special Counsel to the firm. Katherine chaired the Audit and Risk Committee at Clifford Chance and was a member of the firm’s non-executive oversight body, the Partnership Council, for six years. She is currently a non-executive director at Talbot Underwriting Limited, a Lloyd’s managing agent owned by AIG.