Financial advice platform Open Money has made two new senior hires in brand new positions within the business.
Michael Davis who joins the business as Open Money’s new chief finance officer.
Davis, who has previously worked in a number of roles for organisations including HSBC, Towergate Insurance and Co-Op General Insurance, was most recently chief financial officer at ME Group Holdings.
He will be tasked primarily with ensuring that Open Money has the right financial strategy in place to reach its impressive expansion targets.
Meanwhile, James Higgins joins as chief operating officer.
Throughout his career, he has held a number of positions at organisations including Morgan Stanley, BNY Mellon and Access Systems 海角视频 Ltd, but most recently he was international and complex payments lead at NatWest Ltd, where he was responsible for technology applications and processes.
At Open Money, Higgins will be responsible for software and tech engineering, product development and delivery.
Open Money founder and CEO, Anthony Morrow, said: “We’ve been on an exciting journey over the past couple of years, and these new appointments are testament to our ambitions moving forward as a business.
Most Read
“Both Michael and James bring an extensive wealth of relevant knowledge and expertise in the sector, and they also understand Open Money’s vision and what we are trying to achieve. This will help us massively as we continue to grow further and plug the advice gap, making financial advice accessible for all.”
CBRE
CBRE in Manchester has strengthened its national building consultancy team with the appointment of two new directors.
Oliver Campbell takes up his role as head of fit out in Manchester and joins Rob Dawes as director within the project management (PM) team.
Rob joins from Turner and Townsend where he was senior project manager, while Oliver joins from Workspace Design and Build where he was business development manager before being made Director in 2017.
Stephen Williamson, senior director of CBRE’s national building consultancy team, said: “We are delighted to welcome two new directors into the CBRE fold. Both Rob and Oliver have excellent track records in their fields with strong commercial acumen and bring a wealth of expertise and experience to further build and reinforce our Fit out and PM capabilities.”
Nexus Planning
Don’t miss
Planning consultancy, Nexus Planning, has appointed Murray Graham as a new director to help manage its expanding Manchester office.
He joins Nexus from Iceni Projects Manchester, where he had been planning director since 2017.
He will work alongside executive director Peter Tooher and the wider team.
The appointment comes after two of Nexus Manchester’s team – Mr Tooher and director Richard Shepherd – were appointed as High Streets Task Force Experts to help communities and local government transform their high streets.
The practice was recently selected to join the £750m Innovation Chain North Framework to support on town planning services.
JMW Solicitors LLP
Law firm JMW Solicitors LLP has recruited two new partners to its Manchester office, in its employment and corporate recovery and insolvency team’s respectively.
Marcus Difelice joins JMW’s Employment team as a partner from Brabners where he was also a partner.
James Williams joins JMW’s corporate recovery and insolvency department as a partner from Eversheds Sutherland (International) LLP where he was a principal associate.
Commenting on the two new appointments Joy Kingsley, Senior Partner at JMW said: “We are pleased to welcome both Marcus and James to JMW and they both bring with them differing skills and experience to their departments.
“Our Employment team are pleased to welcome Marcus who brings with him an extremely interesting mix of clients especially in the hospitality sector with some great household names.
“James has over 10 year’s excellent experience at Eversheds and he will help our corporate recovery and insolvency department grow and develop further.
“We pleased that we can attract excellent legal talent to JMW and believe our ranking in the Sunday Times Best Company to Work For also helps us achieve this.”
Kuits
Commercial law firm Kuits has offered contracts to five of its latest cohort of qualified trainees after they completed their two-year traineeship.
The newly qualified solicitors will support a number of the firm’s specialist and award-winning advisory services.
Lauren Hemingway and Rebecca Hallam will join the commercial team, whilst Paulina Kasprzak, Sarah Oskui and Lauren Ogden have taken up roles in the firm’s IP, commercial property and employment teams respectively.
Managing partner for Kuits, Steve Eccleston, said: “We are delighted to have offered contracts to five talented young lawyers.
“At Kuits, it is part of our ethos to recruit the highest calibre of trainees in the legal sector and after what has been a challenging final few months in their development, they should be immensely proud of their achievements.
“We are also proud that, even during such testing times, we are able to introduce of our new cohort of trainees to the firm. We look forward to seeing them develop as they commence their legal careers at Kuits.”
Charterfields
Valuation specialists Charterfields has appointed Chris Eckersley as an associate director in its north west corporate recovery team.
A Registered Valuer and member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, Chris has worked for several global surveying practices on assignments in the 海角视频 and internationally.
Ian Maycock, director at Charterfields, said: “Chris is the first of a number of planned recruitments and further strengthens our Manchester valuation team and as the market responds to the events of 2020 his experience enables us to service the growing need for asset valuations and assets disposals.”
Symatrix
Symatrix, a Manchester-based provider of end-to-end managed services for Human Capital Management (HCM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, has appointed Oracle specialist, Charles Courquin, the former IBM and Oracle executive, as its new sales director.
Courquin will focus on powering continued growth across all three of Symatrix’ core service areas: consulting; managed services and fully managed payroll outsourcing.
Supported by a multi-disciplined sales and marketing team, he plans to expand existing client contracts as well as winning new business.
Chris Brooks, managing director of Symatrix, said: “We are delighted to have Charles on board.
“He has extensive experience and expertise in key areas of our offerings like HCM, ERP and payroll and in winning large-scale business transformation programmes that deliver growth and ongoing business success. 2020 has been a year of dynamic growth for Symatrix, especially in the public sector space and Charles’s significant appointment will enable us to escalate this even further in the months and years to come.”
McCann
McCann Manchester has appointed Imogen Tazzyman as executive creative director and Tim Whirledge as head of strategy.
Tazzyman is returning to McCann for a second stint, after four years as creative director at Karmarama working across brands such as the British Army and Confused.com.
Joining from Droga5, Whirledge will report directly to McCann Manchester chief executive Karen Buchanan.
Karen Buchanan said: “We are only ever as strong as our people, Imogen and Tim are excellent additions to the agency.
Don't miss a thing - sign up for your free North West newsletter - and follow us on LinkedIn
Email newsletters
BusinessLive is your home for business news from around the North West- and you can stay in touch with all the latest news from Greater Manchester, Liverpool City Region, Cheshire, Lancashire and Cumbria through our email alerts.
You can sign up to receive daily morning news bulletins from every region we cover and to weekly email bulletins covering key economic sectors from manufacturing to technology and enterprise. And we'll send out breaking news alerts for any stories we think you can't miss.
Visit our email preference centre to sign up to all the latest news from BusinessLive.
For all the latest stories, views, polls and more - and the news as it breaks - .
As we move forward into a post COVID world, brilliant thinking married with bold creativity to drive meaningful change has never been more important for our clients and their brands. Imogen and Tim will help to deliver this in spades working closely with all our other specialists.”
Whirledge said: “As a Strategist, I’d love to be able to claim moving to a house with a shed and a garden a month prior to a global curfew was just great insight.
“The reality however, was helping to shape the outlook and output of one of the most respected agency brands in advertising, from the 海角视频’s most creatively exciting city, was just too good an opportunity to pass up.”
Tazzyman added: “The industry doesn’t talk about the north nearly enough for my liking, yet there is, of course, a wealth of talent outside the M25. The opportunity to work with some of the most progressive and inspirational people in the business was a great pull.”
interactive investor
Manchester-headquartered interactive investor, the 海角视频’s second largest direct to consumer investment platform, has hired Becky O’Connor as head of pensions and Ssavings.
O'Connor has joined in this newly-created role from mutual insurance group Royal London, where she was personal finance specialist.
She will lead ii’s educational programme about pensions and savings, campaign on pensions and savings policy issues and help shape the debate about the 海角视频’s retirement landscape.
Moira O’Neill, head of personal finance at interactive investor, said: “We are committed to helping our customers get the most out of their retirement savings and we are thrilled to welcome Becky, who we have long admired.
“Becky has always championed important consumer issues, and she has done more than most to lift the lid on ethical investing – an issue close to our heart. We need strong communicators like Becky to engage and inspire consumers to take control of their financial future.
“Too many people worry about how they will afford retirement. With a surge in younger investors, who clearly realise that now is that rainy day they should have been saving for, it’s time to engage with more people, at every step of their retirement journey.”