Expertise –Simon is a business- and customer-focused leader an extensive track record of readily comprehending business needs across organizations, whilst understanding and clearly articulating their technical implications and business value. He is adept at managing the trade-off between the strategic and tactical view and has a proven track record of fulfilling the critical interface between business and technology stakeholders, in any organization.
His experience is predominantly in the fields of Program Management, Software Development, IT Management, Business Relationship Management and Business Architecture and has more recently moved to consulting roles. Subject Area – Information Technology, Business Integration, Business Migration, Business/IT alignment.
Excellent Business Acumen – Strategic Planning, Business Development, Product Development, Requirement Elicitation and Management, Budgeting, Team Building & Performance Management, Executive Level Client Relationship Management
Industry Verticals – Software, Commercial Insurance, Banking and Financial Services including Investor Relations, Retail Banking, Investment Management (specifically Index and Exchange Traded Funds), Asset Custody, Fund Accounting, and Public Health.
Clients and employers have ranged from small start-ups to Fortune 100 companies. A consistent hallmark has been to quickly develop trusted business relationships and act as a “Babel Fish’’ between business and IT, ensuring that business understands all technical implications of supporting their needs in their own language.
Representative solutions to business include:
- Business Integration – Delivered a $1.4M solution to give the US Equity Index Portfolio Management business the capabilities to manage the iShares, and other taxable institutional funds tax-efficiently, putting real teeth behind the $600Bn iShares “Tax Efficiency” brand.
- Business Migration – Developed analysis and delivered initial strategy to migrate the $1.3Tn Equity Index Portfolio Management businesses onto, and integrate the $1.4M “Tax Efficiency” solution into, the Blackrock investment platform. A significant challenge given the degree to which BGI had evolved and scaled the index portfolio management business processes beyond that of convention asset management needs.
- Business M&A Decision Support – Demonstrated with visualizations the functional landscape of the $600Bn iShares business, highlighting potential target investment platform vendor functionality gaps, showing the complexities of decoupling it to run it as a separate entity.
- Business/IT Alignment - Partnered with IT and Business Executives to develop a cross business line competitive analysis to establish an “IT Strategic Plan”. The plan’s main purpose was to evolve and align the technology platforms supporting these businesses to better enable them in leveraging new opportunities.
- IT Leadership – Acted as Fractional CIO of SF based Investment Banking Advisory Consultancy start-up devising and implementing their IT footprint from the ground up.
Past employers: Blackrock, Barclays Global Investors (merged with Blackrock), StreetFusion (bought by CCBN and now part of Thompson Reuters Street Events), MSCI Barra and Wells Fargo.
Education - B.Sc. (Hons) Computing and Informatics; University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK.
References are available on request |