As Partner for North Essex, Graeme works with owners across North and Mid Essex, and the Greater Anglia region. He is a Senior Executive whose career spans start-ups, private equity-backed businesses and international corporate groups, with responsibility for 2,500 employees and a P&L of over £100 million. He brings businesses the experience of someone who has built, scaled, restructured and exited companies at every stage of growth.
His career began in logistics with the armed forces and has since covered publishing, IT, telecommunications, management consulting, oil and gas, life sciences, healthcare and facilities services, with teams led across the UK, Europe, Eurasia, the United States, Australia and New Zealand. As a start-up Managing Director in health and social care, he took a business from an idea, three people and two desks to £10 million turnover and 600 staff within six years, running profitably, without borrowing and with £1.9 million in cash. He has also grown turnover by 50% in an underperforming private equity acquisition before a sale at a strong earnings multiplier. Graeme also led a life sciences laboratory through the pandemic as it moved to round-the-clock operation and grew from £24 million to £37 million in a single year.
Graeme offers open, constructive challenge and is candid from the outset about whether he can help. He believes every business needs both management and leadership, that the two are distinct disciplines, and that owners often underestimate the capability and ideas already present in their own teams.
Graeme left New Zealand as a solo parent of two young children, with five suitcases and a bag of diving equipment, and he brings the same readiness to step beyond the familiar to his work with clients. Outside work, he collects wine, travels and spends time with family and friends and has charitable interests in health and the animal rescue sectors.
Based in North Essex, Graeme works with business owners across North Essex and the East of England, and welcomes an initial conversation with any owner who wants an honest assessment of where their business stands and what it could become.
