Our management team has a wide range of skills developed in leading international commercial and development finance institutions.
Collectively, we have worked in more than 50 countries and have completed hundreds of successful engagements with our clients, whether they are consulting projects, training courses, or expert witness assignments. Our expertise covers a wide range of financial services fields including commercial and investment banking, capital and financial markets, pensions and insurance, development finance and enterprise development.
The GBRW Management Team
As well as our dedication to banking and finance expertise, our approach emphasises fellowship, and values honesty and humility. We enjoy meeting new challenges in new business environments, and particularly working in partnership with the management and staff of clients. Good interpersonal skills and the pleasure we take in mutual problem-solving comes through in our work, demonstrated by the long-term relationships we have with many of our clients. Do feel free to connect with us as we welcome genuine introductions.
Paul Rex
Chairman, GBRW Consulting | Managing Director, GBRW Expert Witness
Paul Rex is an experienced banker with unusually wide exposure to both developed and emerging markets, having spent 18 years in management positions with two major banks (Chemical Bank, now JP Morgan Chase, and Crédit Agricole) followed by 25 years consulting on banking and financial sector assignments in the UK and overseas.
Paul’s areas of specialisation include banking strategy; development banks; enterprise risk management (including capital adequacy); credit and specialised lending across a wide range of sectors; investment; and Non-Performing Loans and enterprise restructuring across a number of industries. Paul has an MA from The Queen’s College Oxford, is a Fellow of the Academy of Experts and an accredited Mediator. He is internationally recognised as an expert witness in high value banking litigation.
In his work as a consultant and an expert witness in more than 70 financial sector disputes, Paul has worked in more than 30 countries in Africa, Asia and Europe. He has reviewed credit policies and procedures for more than 60 banks and has drafted these documents for a number of GBRW’s clients.
Jeremy Denton-Clark
Director, GBRW Consulting/ Learning/ Expert Witness
Jeremy is a Director and Company Secretary of GBRW Consulting, GBRW Learning and GBRW Expert Witness. Jeremy joined the GBRW group of companies in 2000 after 32 years of experience as a professional commercial banker in the City of London, the last 8 years of which he was the Chief Executive Officer of a merchant bank.
Jeremy started his career in the foreign exchange department of Kleinwort Benson before moving on to the control of advances made by the French and Belgium branches of the National Westminster Bank. Moving back to London he joined for 13 years a bank owned by commercial banks in the United States, Scandinavia and Germany where he was appointed a Director and General Manager. Jeremy was then appointed the Chief Executive Officer of a merchant bank in London specialising in trade finance, private banking and lending to SMEs.
Jeremy has been a banking consultant for over 20 years and resident in Moscow, Bucharest and Zagreb on bank restructuring projects. He has delivered 52 consultancies in more than 20 countries. He is a specialist in corporate governance and organisation structure; development of a bank’s strategy and objectives; capital adequacy, funding and liquidity; risk management as well as lending to SMEs and mid-cap corporations including recovery of portfolios of NPLs and individual loans in default.
He has been a Non-Executive Director of a commercial bank in the Balkans for 4 years, an advisor to the CEO and Executive Board in a number of banks in developing markets and a trainer on technical banking topics in numerous countries.
David Croft
Director, GBRW Consulting/ Learning/ Expert Witness
David is director of GBRW Limited and GBRW Expert Witness Limited and has been with the Group since 2008.
David’s experience in banking stretches over 35 years, for the most part with Citigroup/Citibank but he has also worked for ING, American Express and Schroders. His early training was in corporate finance but his experience is predominantly investment banking, treasury and financial markets but he has had roles in private and retail banking and fund management. He has held a number of senior management positions with Citibank/Citicorp including General Manager Citicorp Switzerland, Head of Public Sector Finance in North America, Managing Director Derivatives, Global Head of Emerging Market Equities, and Regional Treasurer Australia/New Zealand reflecting in part a successful track record of turning businesses around and building profits. He has served on the boards of ISDA, Citicorp Securities Inc. (US broker dealer), Citibank Australia Limited, and chaired the board of Citicorp International Securities Limited.
David’s qualifications include a BSc (Physics) University College London, MBA London Business School, Internatiional Diploma Haute Ecole, Diploma in E commerce
Johnny Rizq
Director, GBRW Consulting/ Learning
Johnny is a senior level financial services strategist with a 35-year career as a strategy consultant and trainer, banker, economist and financial journalist. Prior to joining GBRW in 2010, he was for 14 years the head of Lloyds Banking Group’s International Advisory Services business, directing and leading financial sector consulting and training assignments across the globe, with a focus on transitional markets. He was also the head of Strategy & Innovation for Lloyds Bank’s Corporate Transaction Services unit, a business with a turnover of more than $500 million.
Johnny’s main strengths and interests lie in strategy development and implementation, organisational development, business planning, financial inclusion, and addressing the financing needs of SMEs. He has particular expertise in Balanced Scorecard development, on which he has run workshops and delivered consulting projects for a number of banks. By helping them apply structured analytical tools and methodologies, Johnny enables his clients to position themselves strategically in the market to take advantage of changing opportunities, and to manage their risk exposure, while making optimal use of their capabilities and brand image. His professional experience covers a range market segments, including SME, Retail and Corporate banking, as well as specialised product areas such as Trade Finance.
He has worked extensively in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, the Caribbean, Central & Eastern Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union. Johnny has a BA in Economics. He speaks English, Arabic, French and Portuguese.
Martin Edwards
Director, Asia
Martin Edwards has a 45-year banking / financing track record spanning Asia, Europe and the Middle East. He has extensive Senior Level Banking Management, Strategic and Trade Finance experience and was Head of Corporate Business Development for Asia for Credit Agricole and Regional VP Asia for J P Morgan Chase.
Martin’s product specialisation is Commodity and Structured Trade Finance. He has 23 years of hands-on experience in this area and ran the Commodity and Structured Trade Finance business line in Asia for both J P Morgan Chase and Credit Agricole.
Martin Edwards is currently based in Singapore and is a Director of GBRW Consulting, Learning, and Expert Witness.
Martin has a BSc (Hons) in Management Sciences from Manchester University where he specialised in Finance, marketing, law and economics. He has credit trained with J P Morgan Chase.
He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Company Secretaries (focus on Accounting /Finance and Company Law).
Nate Dickerson
Director, GBRW Consulting/ Learning
Joining in 2012, Nate Dickerson is the Director of Credit Risk Management at GBRW. Nate’s banking career started with Chase Manhattan, where he enjoyed a 13-year career. Responsibilities included domestic and international debt restructuring, credit administration, and relationship management. While at Chase, Nate also developed and delivered credit risk management training for Chase’s Credit Training Program.
Nate has been engaged as a consultant for over twenty-five years providing consulting and training in more than 20 countries in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Advisory services have focused on problem loan management, enterprise restructuring, corporate governance, credit risk management, loan assessment, institutional and industry assessments, organizational design, and human resource management.
During this time, Nate has also designed and delivered training programs for lending professionals serving the small and medium enterprise (SME) and microentrepreneur markets. Training programs have addressed Problem Loan Management; Out-of-Court Workouts; SME Credit Analysis; Commercial Credit Assessment; Understanding and Appraising a Business Plan, and Credit and Non-credit Risk Management (from the Branch Prospective). His training design and instructional skills have been honed on scores of training workshops conducted for such organizations as RMA, American Institute of Banking, National Bankers Association, Banking Skills Training and Consultancy (Vietnam), Omega Performance, and Egyptian Banking Institute.
Nate holds a Master of Business Administration from the Wharton School, with a concentration in international finance and management information science, and a Bachelor of Arts from Colgate University, with a major in philosophy.
Emmanuel Skourtis
Director, Greece and Cyprus
Emmanuel is the Director of GBRW in Greece and Cyprus. Following over twenty-five years of corporate finance experience, including a sizeable number of projects/transactions in the areas of corporate finance, restructuring, valuations, crisis management and liquidations, he joined the GBRW group of companies in 2016.
During his 7 years at KPMG in Greece as Head of M&A and Restructuring Practice, he conducted a number of projects with systemic banks, involving financial analysis, reviews of internal policy, strategy planning, valuations and devising training. It was also in this period that he became Monitoring Trustee of Piraeus Bank reporting directly to the EU DG Competition and the Board of Directors. In this role, he was instrumental in redesigning and implementing a new operating and procedural model and system of corporate governance for the bank, ensured the compliance of corporate and non-performing loan portfolios and was a key player in the merger and integration of 6 banks into Piraeus Bank, making it the largest in Greece.
Emmanuel holds a PhD in Business Administration and is a visiting Lecturer in these fields at the Greek Open University.
Philippe Belot
Joint Managing Director, GBRW Consulting/ Learning
Philippe Belot has more than 30 years of banking experience, financing the corporate sector. In his last position in 2014-2017, he put in place and led as Managing Director the corporate lending activity of B&C PLC, a newly created merchant bank supervised by the Bank of England and focused on privately-owned SMEs.
Prior to B&C, Philippe was for 18 years Portfolio Manager and Senior Banker at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). There, he carried out complex financing transactions and designed programmes destined to foster the development of SMEs and the private sector in Eastern Europe.
Philippe started his career in the corporate sector, with the finance departments of industrial groups, forming the groundwork of his subsequent banking roles. Philippe graduated in finance from HEC Paris, the leading European business school. His international profile has led him to operate in challenging environments in emerging markets and to manage culturally diverse teams. He speaks English, French and German, as well as Russian and Polish.
Tony Deary
Director, GBRW Consulting/ Learning
Tony is a financial services policy and regulatory advisor based in Singapore with broad experience in banking regulation and financial systems development. Formerly he had a career with the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States in the area of banking and financial services supervision and regulation.
Since 2012 he has worked on financial sector development initiatives globally. He has led numerous banking sector projects particularly in the SE Asia region addressing topics in financial inclusion, payment systems development, financial reporting and sustainable finance.
Tony has served several advisory roles to jurisdictions implementing Basel 3 reforms and IFRS 9 adoption. He has also worked on licensing and supervision frameworks for financial services in the United States and emerging markets.
His work as a consultant with GBRW since 2020 includes supporting financial regulators and financial institutions in formulating and implementing sustainability initiatives such as policy development, environmental and social risk management frameworks, and disclosure requirements.
He is a certified trainer from the London Institute of Banking and Finance, and holds a Masters degree in Economics and Finance from Brandeis University.
Fergus Clark
Director, Financial Markets
Fergus is a Director, Financial Markets with GBRW and has over 20 years of international banking and consulting experience. Fergus is a senior bank executive with proven expertise and a successful track record in Risk Management, Treasury and Programme Delivery.
He began his career with a number of high profile banks including HSBC Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland and Commonwealth Bank of Australia. His experience includes holding senior and advisory roles in Corporate and Structured Finance, Financial Markets, ESG, Policy and Risk Management disciplines.
Fergus joined GBRW in 2015 has more recently advised the CEO and board of a commercial bank on risk and capital issues. He also project managed NPL programs in 7 countries on behalf of the World Bank.
Fergus holds a Bachelor of Laws (Honours) and Bachelor of Business from the University of Technology Sydney. He is also a qualified solicitor, admitted in Ireland (EU), England & Wales and New South Wales (Australia). Fergus has practised law in Australia and England.
Fergus has worked across Australia, Azerbaijan, China, England, Hong Kong, Rwanda, Tajikistan and Vietnam.
Larry Tin
Director, Myanmar
Larry Tin Maung Lay has worked in the financial sector for over 18 years. In 1992, he was responsible for setting the Myanmar Representative Office for Banque Indosuez, now Credit Agricole S.A., becoming the first Representative of a Major European Bank in Myanmar. Apart from developing and maintaining close relationships with the Central Bank of Myanmar, and other financial institutions, he also oversaw the domestic components of all the Structured Counter Trade transactions conducted by Banque Indosuez in Myanmar.
Before becoming the Myanmar Representative, he worked as an Information Officer in two Embassies, in charge of Political and Economic Affairs. While joining GBRW, due to his extensive knowledge of the local banking and finance environment, in 1998, he was also appointed Executive Chairman of KyoPay Technologies, a startup fintech company, advising on regulatory and financial matters.
Mike Coates
Joint Managing Director, GBRW Consulting/ Learning
Mike is the Managing Director of GBRW Learning, and the Deputy Managing Director of GBRW Consulting. Following over 14 years' experience as a professional banker and financial services consultant, he joined the GBRW group of companies in 2011.
During his 10 years with Lloyds Banking Group in London, Mike worked in retail and corporate banking, finance, and risk management. Mike also spent five years with the International Advisory Services department, a specialist unit within the Financial Institutions Group focused on delivering Lloyds Bank branded consulting and training for banks in emerging markets. On leaving Lloyds Bank, he then spent three years as head of financial sector consulting at a leading economic development consulting firm.
Mike has specialist expertise in strategic and financial planning for financial institutions, credit risk management for SME and corporate borrowers, and business analysis and Management Information Systems. Mike has worked on business development and consulting projects in over 25 countries throughout Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. He is also an experienced training instructor, leading courses focused on strategic marketing and Customer Relationship Management for bankers addressing the SME, commercial, and corporate markets.
Mike holds a BSc in Financial Services from the University of Manchester, as well as the esteemed Associateship of the Chartered Institute of Bankers (ACIB). He has also been the lead researcher and co-author of several well-regarded studies and publications.