Significant successes during Hugh’s career include transforming an unprofitable angel network into a £40m fund management business, supervising the privatisation and flotation of the Polish downstream oil sector, successful cross-border M&A, trouble-shooting in various parts of BP, and outside of these activities, co-founding the successful Cambridge Energy Forum

Having qualified as a chartered accountant with Peat Marwick Mitchell (now KPMG) in 1978, Hugh has had a very diverse career centred around financial management and energy.

Following Peat Marwick Mitchell, he joined British Petroleum where he gained extensive experience of accounting, planning, strategy, business development, IT and project management, M&A and marketing. His last role in his 16-year career at BP was in charge of strategy implementation and planning for BP’s refining and marketing businesses in Europe. Essential to this role was the ability to instil efficiency in existing activities and to foster start-up ventures, notably in the new markets of eastern Europe.

Hugh left BP to join Robert Fleming and Co. in the City, to develop their oil-sector corporate finance business, and moved on to Dresdner Kleinwort Benson as a Director in a similar role, thereby adding extensive experience of financial markets and City practice to his financial skills.

In 2000 Hugh joined NW Brown Group to head up the corporate finance team, and later also took responsibility for the management of Great Eastern Investment Forum, and a variety of investment and other projects. He is chairman of Envirolink UK, and serves on the Regional Strategy Board of the ICAEW, leads a QCA regional body, sits on the SDRT Energy Group, was Chair of Sustainable City Reference Group and worka with the eastern region’s universities (“i10″). He is also a non-exec director of several technology companies.