Derek Scott was Economic Adviser to the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, between 1997 and 2003. Senior positions in both the private and public sectors over the last twenty years prepared him for this demanding position at the heart of government. As a Lombard Street Associate, Derek is offering to provide his extensive experience to our clients in a consultancy role.

After leaving Downing Street he spent two years as Economic Adviser to KPMG and also served as a non-executive director on the board of Resolution Life. He is currently visiting professor at the Cass Business School, City University, as well as an active consultant.

Before being taking his post with Tony Blair, he spent twelve years at Barclays de Zoete Wedd (BZW) where he was Director of European Economics and prior to that he was International Policy Adviser to Shell International Petroleum Ltd and Chief Economist at Shell UK Ltd.

Between 1976 and 1979 he had served in a similar role at H.M. Treasury where he was special adviser to the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Denis Healey, before moving into the private sector.

Stryker Mcguire is a native New Yorker, acclaimed journalist and a contributing editor to Newsweek magazine where has worked for 30 years.

At Newsweek his posts included London Bureau Chief, Houston Bureau Chief, West Coast Editor and Mexico City Bureau Chief. During his tenure in London he was widely acclaimed for his stories which covered the rise and fall of Tony Blair and he was awarded Best Foreign Reporting award from the Foreign Press Association in London in 2000 for his coverage on immigration issues.

As West Coast Editor he directed the magazine's award-winning coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial as well as major disasters such as the Southern California brush fires of 1993, the Los Angeles-Northridge earthquake of 1994, the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 and the Waco (Texas) Siege in 1993.

He is author of Streets With No Names (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1991), which chronicled his travels through Central and South America in 1986-1987 and was a co-author, with other Newsweek correspondents, of Charlie Company: What Vietnam Did To Us (William Morrow & Co., 1983).

Stryker is a regular television and radio guest in Britain, Europe and the United States and a frequent contributor to such publications as The Guardian, The Observer, The New Statesman and The Spectator.

Colin Waugh has over 20 years experience in global financial markets and began his career at Merrill Lynch specializing in commodities before working at Shearson Lehman Brothers in the US where he was Vice President, Commodities Division. He also operated his own Commodity Trading Advisory firm, C. Macdonald Futures. He has worked extensively in the developing world, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, where he has been involved in post-conflict project management as well as investment consulting across the region.

Colin was partner, and senior portfolio manager at New York-based Galtere Ltd, a $2.5bn commodity – global macro fund until 2008 and joined Lombard Street as an Associate Director in September of that year. His research interests include emerging market investing, particularly in Asia and Africa, currency and commodity markets and the politics of the world trade system. Colin is a published author and holds a MSc. from the London School of Economics.

Simon Martin is the CBRE Professor of Real Estate Finance at Reading University within the Henley Business School. He joined the University and Lombard Street Associates in 2008. Prior to this he was a Managing Director of international real estate investment management practice, Curzon Global Partners (AEW). Simon was a Founding Partner of its European business, sat on investment and asset allocation committees globally and served as the Head of Research for Europe. He remains a Senior Advisor to Curzon and its clients and remains on its standing investment committee.

Simon’s career continues to be been heavily focussed on the use of applied economics and capital markets analysis to drive asset allocation and investment decision-making for all forms of equity, debt & structured finance instruments. Prior to Curzon, he served with the international property consultancies DTZ and CBRE and worked at the Property Research Unit within the Department of Land Economy at Cambridge University.

Ajanta Hilton is a Chartered Accountant and a tax specialist who joined the team of Associates in February 2006. She spent two and a half years in KPMG's Financial Services corporation taxation practice working on large projects for Deutsche Bank and HSBC. She then moved into KPMG's mergers and acquisitions taxation group in an advisory role to private equity clients on leveraged acquisition structures. As a result of undertaking several due diligence assignments she has extensive experience of tax environments in various European countries.

Adrian Phillips has over 25 years experience of international equity markets.

He has worked with Williams de Bro, Dresdner Kleinwort and Baring Securities and his career has involved research management, national market investment strategy as well as research into individual companies and sectors.

The research team that he managed for Continental Europe at Dresdner Kleinwort was ranked number one by Extel and he was personally ranked in the top three by both Extel and Institutional Investor for company research and strategy research in Germany. Amongst the many investment banking mandates that he supported was the privatisation of St Gobain, the first ever by a French government, for which he was the lead analyst. More recently his work has covered the global technology hardware industry.

Adrian is of British and Swiss nationality and speaks fluent French and German.

Keith Grant is an international communications consultant, with more than 25 years experience as a financial journalist based in Europe and Latin America and 10 years in media relations at Spain's leading bank.

A graduate of Russian and Political Studies, he was for 17 years a foreign correspondent of Reuters, filing reports from more than 40 countries, and has also written for a wide range of media including Business Week, The Guardian and the BBC. During this period he regularly followed multilateral financial institutions such as the IMF, World Bank, IADB, and OPEC.

Most recently he was Head of International Media Relations at Santander, one of the worldâ??s top 10 banks, where he worked on the recent takeover bid for Abbey National in the UK as well as on several bank acquisitions in Latin America.

Michael Oliver is a professor of economics with fifteen years of experience working in management consultancy and academia. His business experience is within the IT and financial services sector and he has worked in many high profile companies and government sectors.

Academically he has held several senior appointments at universities in the US and UK and is currently Professor of Economics at the Ecole Superieure de Commerce de Rennes. He is a recognised authority in teaching on monetary policy, exchange rate regimes and financial markets and institutions. He has written numerous academic articles and has had several books published on monetary economics and economic history.

Michael's work has brought him into contact with former prime ministers, senior officials in HM Treasury, the Bank of England and senior economic advisers.

Leigh Skene is a Canadian who has been involved in financial markets ever since he first purchased equities when he was a teenager. He became involved in debt analysis and trading at the Sun Life Assurance company of Canada. Lured by the glamour of investment banking, he joined A.E. Ames & Company in Montreal one of Canada's premier underwriters. He then moved to Toronto to join another investment bank Burns, Fry and Company (now BMO Nesbitt Burns) where he was Head of Fixed Income Trading, then Chief Economist.

In 1980 he left Burns Fry and established himself as an independent economic consultant specializing in financial markets. With financial markets becoming ever more global, he moved to England in 1993 to help his clients gain better international perspective.

Leigh Skene is the author of four books, Managing a Bond Portfolio, 1977; The Canadian Economy: its problems and its potential, 1978; That's the Way the Money Goes, 1988 and Cycles of Inflation and Deflation, 1992. He wrote the Bond and Money Market Letter for Burns Fry for many years and has written articles for investment publications.

Boris Petkov was Economic Adviser at Her Majesty's Treasury Macroeconomic Policy and International Finance Directorate between 2001 and 2006. Positions in both the public sector and academia over the last fifteen years equipped him for this demanding position inside the central government economic management.

After leaving Whitehall he spent two years as a Senior Lecturer at City of London College. He is currently visiting associate Professor at the American Institute for Foreign Studies (AIFS) London and Macroeconomic Policy Consultant managing various EC sponsored international development projects.

Before being taking his post with the Treasury, he spent six years with the Central Bank of Iceland where he was Senior Economist and prior to that he was Research Fellow at the University of Iceland.

In 1989 he graduated from the University of National and World Economy (UNWE) and currently is completing his PhD by research with the University of Birmingham.