Meet LRM’s speakers and trainers

Rakesh Kapila is a Forensic Accountancy specialist who qualified with Coopers & Lybrand (now PricewaterhouseCoopers) in 1983. He has over sixteen years' experience in this niche area. During this time, he has been responsible for expert reports and cited evidence on over 200 cases of litigation.

Rakesh is experienced in personal injury, matrimonial disputes, including business valuations and investigating the financial situation of married couples and of family businesses, commercial cases and fraud investigations.

Kevin Simmons is a partner at Chadwick LLP, a North Western 6-partner general practice. As well as running a client base of SMEs, much of his time is spent on Corporate Finance assignments. These are all within the SME market and will range from arranging MBOs or MBIs, to conducting Financial Due Diligence for Banks and Institutions.

To date, Kevin has conducted over 200 Due Diligence assignments. He was awarded the ICAEW Corporate Finance qualification in 2007.

Pat Scott is a founding partner of Leading Edge Change, an organisation providing NLP based performance coaching, consulting and training to businesses of all sizes. As an accountant and treasurer, she is also a veteran of more than 300 corporate finance transactions.

Pat worked as Director of Tax and Treasury for Thorn EMI plc and Group Treasurer of Redland plc before founding Leading Edge Change. With ten years of consulting in corporate finance, corporate treasury and financial risk management, she also understands the theory and regulatory framework, and has helped clients to complete successful deals. Pat also leads courses in financial management and corporate finance for most of the major financial professional institutes and associations. She is an experienced non-executive director and co author of 'Having their Cake - How the City and Big Bosses are Consuming UK Business', as well as author of a number of published articles.

Stephen Ward is managing director of Premier Financial Solutions (UK) Ltd and a director of Pilgrim Trustee Services Ltd. He operates from his firm's Spanish office. Stephen has worked in the pensions field since 1976, and speaks regularly at conferences aimed at practitioners in the accountancy and legal profession.

He has been a member of the Pensions Industry Working Group, and has been involved in consultations with the Government and HMRC in the lead up to and the implementation of pensions taxation reform.