Nicholas Young
Managing Director, Beer & Young Ltd

Nick is the founder of Beer & Young Ltd having established the business early in 1998.

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

Nick set up his first business at the end of the Eighties, advising companies on fund raising and venture capital. For the last twenty years now (ten 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 clients 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.

Peter Gaut FCMA
Associate

Peter is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants and has spent many years helping owners of companies achieve their objectives. He is passionate about business and getting the right mix of good management, investment capital and development to achieve the highest returns. He has run SME's as Managing Director as well as acting as a consultant to others, incuding some large Plc's . His recent experience advising on a number of administrations that achieved corporate recovery well qualifies him to fully understand the needs of clients.

Philip Sethill
Associate

Phil spent seven years working with Marks and Spencers in a management role. He left in 1976 to take over ownership of a food manufacturing business, supplying most of the major supermarkets and numerous other outlets with own-label confectionery. The company grew from strength to strength over the 26 years that he ran the operation, employing 250 staff, until it was sold to a Danish corporation 4 years ago. Since then he has used his wealth of experience, gained from running all aspects of the business, to act as a consultant, helping a variety of companies re-organize and re-structure to achieve higher returns. He believes that a successful business requires strong management, an understanding of how capital can best be used to maximise margins.

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.

Tom Clay
Associate

Tom runs his own consultancy advising small and medium-sized business customers. Having worked for many years for a major UK bank in a variety of lending roles, he understands the issues that face the young and growing business. He also has wide-ranging experience of firms in difficulty and how banks deal with them through time in the bank's Special Situations and Commercial Insolvency Units. Tom has many contacts among financial and insolvency professionals. With a MBA from Henley Management College, Tom brings the skills to advise firms either in financial difficulty or seeking funding for growth.

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.