This week's London appointments

This week’s round up of London appointments includes YFM Equity, PUSH Mind and Body, and Shoosmiths . Read on to find out more.

Charlie Winward, YFM Equity

Experienced growth investor Charlie Winward is the latest partner to join YFM Equity Partners (YFM), adding further portfolio support as the firm targets significant growth, with the number of portfolio businesses expected to grow by around 40 per cent over the next three years.

Based at YFM’s London office and working across its offices in London and Reading, Charlie takes on the new role of head of portfolio (South), complementing colleague Steve Harrison who is head of portfolio (North), supporting the teams in Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester.

With almost 20 years’ experience, Charlie began his career as a technologist at JP Morgan, working in a variety of roles in London, New York and Brussels. He then completed an MBA at the University of California before joining IP Group plc in 2007.

From 2016, Charlie co-led the VCT team at NVM, including re-launching the firm’s growth investment strategy, which included successfully building out a team of investors and growing the portfolio to over 40 investments.

As well as direct support to the portfolio, in his new role, Charlie will oversee YFM’s portfolio support in the South. YFM will continue to build its portfolio which contains a mix of high growth businesses seeking to scale rapidly; more established, profitable businesses with clear growth plans in the main supported by management teams taking ownership for the first time.

Charlie comments: “As soon as I started talking to YFM, I could see that their supportive partner approach, particularly working with founders and providing follow-on investment, aligned with my own. YFM has a strong reputation within the industry, illustrated by their rapid, successful fundraising, and they also have some ambitious expansion plans.”

Emma Fernandes, PUSH Mind and Body

PUSH Mind and Body, a wellbeing and mental health training company which seeks to make work better, has appointed Emma Fernandes as its new managing director. She brings over two decades of frontline mental healthcare experience to the role, joining from the charity Solent Mind where she spent the past 16 years as business development director.

Emma is a pioneer within the UK mental health community who began her career in the NHS working at an acute mental health admissions ward. She then turned her focus to recovery, moving into the third sector where she led one of the UK’s first vocational advice services providing workplace-related mental health support for employees, employers and jobseekers.

Prior to her move to Solent Mind, she initially worked alongside the Hampshire-based charity to set up a ground-breaking mental health initiative with Portsmouth Solent NHS Trust. Focused on providing mental health wellbeing and recovery support in the workplace, this partnership became the basis of a national model for the NHS.

Commenting on the new appointment, PUSH Founder Cate Murden said: “We’re delighted to welcome Emma in her new role. As a pioneer and leading expert in workplace mental healthcare programmes, she brings huge value to PUSH’s expanding team.

Emma added: “As someone who has worked closely with PUSH in my former role, I have long respected its approach in how they address mental health and wellbeing issues within the corporate world. I’m delighted to join the team and bring my experience to the fore to help further support its growing client base.”

Andrew Bowden-Brown, Shoosmiths

Law firm Shoosmiths has boosted its dispute resolution and litigation practice with the appointment of specialist financial services disputes resolution lawyer Andrew Bowden-Brown as a partner in London.

Previously head of banking & finance at Francis Wilks & Jones, Andrew has more than 20 years of experience across the asset-based lending, alternative finance and banking and finance industry.

His experience encompasses advising banks, asset-based lenders and other financial institutions on security and enforcement issues arising out of facility and security documentation.

These issues range from complex multi-jurisdictional fraud claims to debt recovery matters, claims against sureties, loss mitigation and actions by current or former clients against a financier, as well as contentious and non-contentious insolvency and asset recovery and tracing claims.

Alex Bishop, national head of the dispute resolution and litigation practice, said: “Andrew will be a great asset to clients of our growing financial services disputes and investigations practise. His specialism in asset-based lending and alternative finance complements our existing market leading asset-based lending and asset finance practices.

“In addition, his knowledge of crypto asset recovery offers another discipline to our already experienced financial services litigation team. We are very pleased to welcome Andrew to the firm.”

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