Joined the Board on 22 February 2021. Mike has 33 years of investment management experience, most recently at BlackRock where he was a Fund Manager and Managing Director. For many years he managed funds investing in listed UK small and mid-cap companies. These funds included BlackRock Smaller Companies Trust plc (2002 to 2019) and BlackRock Throgmorton Trust plc (2008 to 2018), both now FTSE250 constituents. He was Head of the BlackRock UK Small and Mid Cap Equities Team (2015 to 2017). Previously, he worked in private equity, mainly helping to put together management buyouts; he was a Local Director for 3i Group plc. Mike qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Peat Marwick Mitchell (now KPMG). He is also a Non Executive Director of Central Asia Metals plc where he sits on the Remuneration, Sustainability, Audit and Nomination committees.