I first met Jeremy Denton-Clark in 1993. I had been a client of an outplacement company called Fairplace Consulting for some months before joining them to set up a consulting arm. Jeremy had been winding up a small bank in the City where he had been Managing Director; having completed the process and ensured that all creditors were paid in full, he had booked himself in for the outplacement service. One of my roles involved advising Fairplace’s banking clients on potential consulting opportunities and we soon discovered that we had a lot in common, both professionally and personally.
The mid-1990s was a very active period for consulting work in Central and Eastern Europe, much of it funded by the UK Government’s Know How Fund and the recently formed European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Our discussions led to Jeremy’s first appointment as an adviser to a major project supporting banks in Russia led by Lloyds Bank and ING, which ran for nearly three years and left Jeremy with a lasting affection for its people and culture.
After a spell as a director of another consulting business, Jeremy joined the board of GBRW in 2000. Over the following years, we worked jointly on a number of projects, including managing a due diligence project for Golomt Bank of Mongolia on a potential acquisition; supporting the liquidation of Serbia’s four largest banks in the wake of Slobodan Milosevic’s departure; advising the Bangladesh Privatisation Commission on the sale of one of the country’s larger state-owned banks; and advising the Belizean Government on strengthening the country’s Development Finance Corporation and establishing a new housing bank.
Jeremy’s professional CV over the past 30 years shows assignments in more than 30 countries, literally from A to Z (Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe) and with a recurring focus on the Balkans, where he was a member of the Board of Directors and Remuneration Committee for Nova Banka, Bosnia and an adviser to the Board of Management for Privredna Banka, Croatia. Following our initial work for Golomt Bank in 2002, he also acted as the London Representative for the Bank over a 16 year period.
Jeremy has always been highly supportive of his colleagues and of the staff of our partner firms in many of the countries where GBRW has been involved. In addition to working on more bids than I can count, Jeremy acted as Company Secretary for GBRW and its sister company GBRW Expert Witness after its creation in 2010.
Jeremy stepped down from his Director and Company Secretary roles at a meeting of GBRW’s Board in April. One of our first agenda items was a strong vote of appreciation from all of Jeremy’s colleagues for his numerous contributions to the company’s success over the past 25 years. Writing this article has given me the happy experience of recalling the many projects and countries where we have worked together, some of which are recorded in the photos above. Jeremy and his wife Catherine have our very best wishes for his retirement.
Paul Rex
Chairman