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James leads the transaction consulting practice. His focus is providing commercial and financial due diligence to companies and investors, especially those involved in cross-border M&A.

James joined Ernst & Young from the University of Oxford, where he obtained a degree in Modern Languages.  He qualified as a Chartered Accountant after spells in the Corporate Finance and Insolvency teams, including winding up a specialist government department.  He also worked in the audit department, where he focused on manufacturing companies.  He spent a further two years with E&Y in Germany, auditing a variety of international manufacturing companies. James then joined Deutsche Bank as an equity analyst, specialising in the TMT market and covering most of the large European telecoms, many through the course of their privatisation.  James then joined PwC’s  Corporate Finance team, where he led pan-European transactions, before joining the Valuation & Strategy division, providing valuations of unlisted companies, financial instruments, options, brands and other intangible assets.  James also led the PwC coverage of the restructuring of the European telecoms market.

In recent years, he has been Head of Transaction Services at Smith & Williamson, where his work covered valuation opinions, financial and commercial due diligence and IPO/M&A advice.  James has also appeared as an expert witness in valuation issues and loss of profits claims.  He has also led financial and commercial due diligence investigations into a wide variety of transactions and has advised companies on whether they should proceed with their planned investments, and has been involved in the listing of more than 20 companies on the AIM market.

James has worked extensively across Europe, Asia-Pacific and South America.  He is fluent in four European languages.

His experience includes:

• Leading the $500 million debt-for-equity swap for an international telecoms group
• Listing of a US-based technology incubator on AIM
• Due diligence and valuation of mines and power plants in Brazil, with expected investment of > $450 million
• Due diligence and valuation of a division of Siemens being bought by a US investor
• Due diligence into various German cable TV firms
• Advice to banks about the restructuring of loans held in European telecom companies
• Due diligence on behalf of banks into potential loans across a variety of sectors for loans from £10 million to £50 million
• Valuation of a portfolio of early-stage Chinese businesses in the renewable energy space
• Due diligence for a pan-European manufacturing group prior to its restructuring