Baringa adds five partners and three directors to UK consulting team

Baringa Partners has in recent months made a number of senior appointments. The UK-based management consultancy added five new partners to its leadership ranks – David Blackwell, Rob Maguire, Guy Munton, Chris Nott and Simon Wilson – and appointed three directors. Four of the five external hires joined from direct rivals.

David Blackwell joined Baringa from Deloitte, where he was a partner in the analytics division of the Big Four firm, specialising in the exploitation of data to drive high-performance teams. Prior to working for Deloitte for nearly six years, he spent five years in Detica’s management consulting wing, while he started his career at Accenture in the firm’s consulting arm. Throughout his career Blackwell has helped FTSE 100 companies and sports teams improve their data quality, embed enterprise-wide data governance, build analytics operating models and exploit machine learning to automate insight generation.

At Baringa, a London headquartered consulting firm with three international offices*, Blackwell has been tasked with leading Baringa’s Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) practice. “Data and technology are more readily available and more powerful than ever before, and the possibilities created by AI are seemingly limitless. However, for many organisations, the promise of analytics and AI is yet to be realised. Our focus at Baringa is to demystify these realms – our capabilities in digitisation, robotics, analytics and machine learning sit alongside deep industry knowledge and expertise in driving transformation,” commented the new partner.

Three partner appointments have been made in firm’s Financial Services arm. Simon Wilson has over 15 years’ experience leading strategic and regulatory change in banking and risk management, having worked at several leading universal banks. He joined in January from London based Provident Financial Group (PFG), and previously served Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Barclays and Santander, after he launched his career with PwC.

Guy Munton, who has been with Baringa since 2008 when he joined from Accenture, has been consulting to clients in the financial services sector for over 15 years. He is a partner within Baringa’s finance, risk and compliance practice and leads the client asset protection (CASS) offering, specialising in the delivery of regulatory change; ensuring relevant rules are correctly interpreted, and ultimately delivered and validated in line with regulators’ expectations. Chris Nott, also has roughly 14 years of experience in financial services consulting, focused mostly on large-scale strategic and regulatory transformation across banking and capital markets. He has led a number of large-scale multi-jurisdictional programmes covering IT and non-IT change delivery, operating model design and implementation and process re-engineering. He started his career Higham Group, after which he spent four years at Accenture prior to joining Baringa at the end of 2008.

Lastly, Rob Maguire, who similar to Munton and Nott has been promoted internally to partner. With 15 years’ consulting experience, Maguire helps the firm’s energy, utility and financial services clients operate their businesses more effectively. He specialises in working with leadership teams to design and implement programmes that grow a sustainable culture of continuous improvement and deliver efficient operational environments. He has been with Baringa since early 2013 – Maguire previously worked in KPMG’s Operations Strategy service line, at IBM Global Business Services and at Thames Water.

All three director appointments have been made within the firm’s Finance, Risk and Compliance arm. Nikki Birt, a director for Financial Crime, joined from EY and has extensive experience of developing and delivering practical, innovative solutions to support clients in understanding and managing their Financial Crime risk. Prior to her six year spell at the Big Four firm, Birt worked for the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and two public sector agencies focused on battling crime. Cathy Scott, a director for Finance Optimisation, made the move from IBM Business Consulting. She served the consulting firm for two decades, including transferring from PwC after the US tech giant acquired PwC’s consulting business in 2002 – Scott most recently focused on finance transformation within the Financial Services sector.

Philip Stanton, director for Finance Optimisation, also joined Baringa – one of UK’s best workplaces according to the Great Place to Work Institute – from IBM Business Consulting. He brings extensive experience in finance and technology optimisation within the Financial Services sector. He served IBM for fourteen years, and previously worked for Bank One and HSBC.

Baringa’s significant people investment in its Finance, Risk & Compliance practice reflects, according to senior partner Gareth Campbell, the increased pressure on financial services firms to meet regulatory expectations, while coping with a rapidly changing business environment that demands ever greater cooperation between internal functions. “The risk management landscape has undergone significant change since 2008. But, while the financial crisis has led to substantial structural changes within firms, many are still struggling to balance legislative pressures with the need to adapt to internal demands made of the finance function.”

* Baringa’s international offices are based in Düsseldorf (launched in 2011), Abu Dhabi and New York (both established last year).