Mike Gillespie

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

SKILLS

ABOUT MIKE GILLESPIE

A highly experienced corporate finance professional. Following a long and diverse career in banking and private equity, I now run the £2bn+ private credit investment proposition for an LGPS pool, a challenging and hugely rewarding role. For over 30 years, I have enjoyed a career in the finance industry spanning a multi-disciplined field; private equity investing, and, on the banking side, arranging/underwriting finance for corporate, acquisition and infrastructure transactions. I have board experience as a non executive director and an observer on boards of investee companies. In 2021, I completed the Financial Times Non Executive Director Diploma. This is a post graduate level formally accredited qualification delivered over 6 months from February 2021. The programme covers the legal liabilities and duties of being a non-executive, board structure and the behavioural skills required to make an effective contribution to the board. My aim was to pursue a \'plural career\' however the opportunity to lead a private credit team was too good to miss and I returned to full time employment. A Fellow of the Chartered Banker Institute since 2007, I have continually sought to broaden my professional education; I completed the CISI Capital Markets Programme in 2017 and the ICAEW CFAB in 2020. Through ad hoc formal training and experience in the field I am well versed in business planning and proposition development, viability analysis and the assessment of investment plans, commercial and financial due diligence, and the negotiation of complex debt and equity documentation. I worked for Bank of Scotland for 20 years specialising in the early years in corporate and acquisition finance, and infrastructure finance under PFI. In 2001 I joined Integrated Finance, the bank’s private equity arm, and was ultimately to lead the regional business, a network of seven offices with 55 highly qualified personnel under my remit. As Board Observer on investee company boards, I worked closely with management teams post investment to define strategic goals, maximise long term viability and ultimately drive profitable exits. After the financial crisis, I returned to a senior debt role in Lloyds Bank focusing on acquisition finance transactions where I structured and arranged a full spectrum of successful deals mainly for mid-market commercial clients and large professional services firms. I left Lloyds after 11 years in late 2019.