Nicholas Young
Managing Director, Beer & Young Ltd

Nick is the founder and managing director of Beer & Young Ltd having established the business in 1998. Beer & Young are best known for raising capital quickly, predominantly from business angels, for businesses that are experiencing financial pressures.

Nick’s career in finance began in the mid-Eighties at First National Bank plc, where he moved through marketing and audit departments, predominantly concentrating on the personal finance side of FNB business in which they were a leading provider.

Nick established his first business at the end of the Eighties, advising companies on fund raising, accessing both equity and debt capital. For the last twenty years now (eleven of which with B&Y) he has been delivering help and funding solutions to businesses, always in the SME arena, and given this experience is well placed to understand the problems and needs of business owners through this current turbulent economic period.

Declan Williams
Director of Business Development

Declan enjoyed a 10 year career with a major UK bank and progressed to management positions within the small business and corporate banking divisions. He left the bank to purchase his own leisure business and ran this successfully for over 10 years. He also has an MBA from Kingston Business School (2000) and is a member of the Association of MBAs. Entrepreneurial consultancy experience is one of his major strengths and he has been involved in a number of major leisure projects at a strategic level. His experience within the SME sector is particularly relevant to our clients and he has been instrumental in facilitating a number of investment completions leading to corporate recovery.

Michael Morley-Smith
Associate

Trained as an accountant, Michael spent 10 years with a public company, finally in the position of Group Company Secretary. Since then he has run various small businesses and undertaken management consultancy assignments with a particular emphasis on turnaround finance and corporate recovery situations, gaining particular experience working with Insolvency Practitioners. Michael has intimate knowledge of small business practice as well as company insolvency rules. He is therefore able to understand the difficulties many entrepreneurs are faced with and expertly able to assist with company recovery.

Hilary Bishop
Associate

Hilary has joined Beer & Young Ltd. as an Associate whilst continuing to run his own consultancy involved in the provision of business and corporate finance advice to SMEs. His involvement in corporate recovery started over 35 years ago in the creation of a substantial vehicle leasing operation for a major motor manufacturer. He subsequently created a tax based leasing operation for a manufacturing company and then another vehicle leasing operation for a major vehicle distributor. He started his own consultancy 30 years ago and now has a substantial network of lenders and contacts allowing him to handle any business or corporate recovery requirement. Hilarys wide range of entrepreneurial experience in businesses large and small means that he is very well equipped to analyse the needs of small to medium sized enterprises with either difficulties or great prospects.

Peter Douglas
Associate

Peter graduated with a degree in Business Studies whilst working as a commercial apprentice with Massey Ferguson. After graduation Peter became PA to the Export Director and then moved into the export servicing department having responsibility for Central and West Africa. This was the start of some 20 years involvement in the export business all over the World, mainly in the fields of sales and marketing. Peter then moved to Northamptonshire whereupon he set up Business Finance Services Ltd which specialises in Commercial Finance. Peter therefore brings a wide range of experience to his role as Beer & Young Associate.

Brian Rutter
Associate

Brian began his career as a management graduate with GEC Telecom in Coventry which was the start of 20 years in the technology industry during which he began in sales and marketing before taking up a general management role with a global player. By the year 2000 Brian was active in the dot com boom and successfully raised venture capital for small technology companies and was a director of an early stage technology business. For the past 6 years he has built and managed his own consultancy and business finance brokerage specialising in property finance. Having worked in small and large global companies he brings a wealth of experience to Beer & Young and its clients.

Ian Ross
Associate

Ian has helped a wide variety of businesses to restore confidence in their business numbers, to take better decisions as a result and anticipate business “icebergs”.
Since 2000, he has operated as an interim manager and has supported a variety of organisations in manufacturing, distribution, professional services and not-for-profit sectors through periods of financial stress.
Prior to this, he held senior financial appointments in Philips Electronics, Whitecroft plc and Worthington Manufacturing Limited.
He is a Chartered Management Accountant and is an active contributor to CIMA regional events and workshops.

Shon Laird
Associate

Shon business career has spanned some 20+ years as an Interim Manager – with a successful track record across a wide and diverse range of industry sectors that have included infill senior management roles to full-scale rationalisations, disposals, relocations etc. for businesses of varying sizes from SME’s to FTSE & AIM listed companies. His many business projects have included:

John Radford
Associate

Jon Radford trained as a civil engineer and worked for Cleveland Bridge and RT James and Partners, before moving to Spain to become the technical director of Hoteles Cryns. He returned to the UK in 1986 to join Industrial Technology Securities, a venture capital firm, before moving to the corporate finance department of Belmont Bank ltd, a boutique bank specialising in raising money for privately owned companies. Latterly he owned and ran his own printing company which he sold in 2003, since when he has built-up a consultancy business, under the aegis of the Institute for Independent Management (IIBI). Along the way he also picked-up two business degrees.

He is a sympathetic listener, with large experience of the issues besetting private companies, as well as the practical problems of raising finance for them.

Alban Kissane
Associate

Alban qualified as a Chartered Management Accountant in the early eighties and has been involved in many start-up and turnaround businesses throughout his career. He has been a successful Finance Director and has worked in various PLC's as well as providing mentoring and creating new businesses. He has been CEO of his own business and has assumed this role in interim positions for a number of SME's requiring help within the turnaround sector. He offers a wide range of relevant skills and experience to help enterprises and entrepreneurs meet the challenges of an ever increasingly competitive marketplace.

Mark Blayney
Associate

Mark Blayney trained with PWC working on SME turnaround and insolvency projects in the UK and overseas, as well as on secondment into a UK clearing bank; before leaving to work on a turnaround in industry and then to be appointed as ‘turnaround’ partner in a top 20 firm.
He has worked as an independent turnaround consultant and finance broker for seven years and is also involved in buying SMEs himself to turn around.
He is an accredited turnaround professional through the Institute for Turnaround Professionals and a business author with books published on small business turnaround, raising finance and buying and selling business.
Mark is a Chartered Accountant, non practicing Licensed Insolvency Practitioner and an MBA.

Robin Pyke
Associate

Robin has been in the finance industry since 1983. The bulk of his working life has been spent arranging Hire Purchase, Leasing & cash flow finance for the business sector. He has worked for the lenders themselves, but in recent years has been running his own Business Finance Brokerage. He will bring these many years of experience to help Beer & Young and their clients.

Chris Jones
Associate

Based in Wolverhampton, Chris worked in the corporate banking industry for 22 years, spending the last 12 years specialising in Asset Based Lending. He was latterly Regional Director of the ABL arm of a major Bank in the Midlands. Nowadays, in addition to his work with Beer & Young, Chris runs his own Factoring / Invoice Discounting advisory firm called Select Business Finance.

Brian O'Reilly
Associate

Brian has worked closely with SMEs since 1983, initially as a senior manager with Lloyds Bank in the Black Country and then in Birmingham City Centre. He has across the board knowledge of business in the West Midlands. In recent years he has worked as a commercial finance broker, based in Birmingham, and he has a wide ranging experience of finance providers in the city and West Midlands. He has also worked with two Birmingham based accountancy firms and with a number of private clients with cashflow concerns.

Rob Southwell
Associate

Rob is based in the South East of England and brings his many years experience of sales and marketing to benefit the clients of Beer and Young. He has worked for a non prime lender in the vehicle finance sector since 1998 and prior to this has had considerable management experience with small/medium sized manufacturing companies.

John Cowper
Associate

John B. Cowper qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Ernst & Young and has spent more than 20 years in the international financial arena, having resided in London, the Isle of Man, Bangkok, Beijing, and Detroit. A skilful broker with a special penchant for putting together the principles in an agreement, John combines active business common sense with sound technical knowledge to provide a dedicated service and never-say-die determination for his clients.