In a major expansion of Mayfair 101’s expertise, the fast-growing Australian- headquartered independent investment and corporate advisory group has added leading business figures from telecommunications, media, marketing and international relations to its Advisory Board.
Prominent Australian businesswoman and CEO of the Switzer Financial Group, Maureen Jordan, will join communications expert Toby Ralph, former Vodafone director Amit Pau, and internationally respected former British diplomat Sir Phillip Thomas on the Advisory Board effective immediately.
Mayfair 101 Managing Director, James Mawhinney, said the addition of four highly respected business leaders to the company’s Advisory Board came at a significant time for the group.
“Following the success of Mayfair 101’s Australian investment management company IPO Wealth, which recently surpassed the $90 million mark after only two years in operation, we are now looking to significantly expand our product offering into the UK market,” Mr Mawhinney said.
The message in Australia has been very clear. Investors are looking for non-bank alternatives that provide regular income, given term deposit rates offered by Australia’s banks are at historical lows. So, with the UK also experiencing over a decade of historically low interest rates, Mayfair 101 has Britain firmly in its sight.”
In mid-2018, Mayfair 101 expanded its UK operations with the launch of M12 Global, a London- based investment management company based on the same model as Australia’s IPO Wealth.
“The UK has always been a key focus for the Mayfair 101 group, given the depth of financial services expertise and resources,” Mr Mawhinney said.
“Mayfair 101 intends to list M12 Global on one of the main London stock exchanges later this year to fill over $3 billion worth of demand for credit within the Mayfair 101 portfolio over the next five years.”
While each of the new Advisory Board members has had an ongoing relationship with Mayfair 101, for financial media expert and advocate for women in business, Maureen Jordan, the defining interest is the Group’s innovative approach to investment.
“Switzer Financial Group has worked with many companies in the financial services industry over the past few decades, most operating with fairly traditional models. It is exciting to see an Australian company is innovating to provide investors with fresh alternatives and that Mayfair 101 has exciting growth plans internationally that I can play a role in supporting,” Ms Jordan said.
The new appointees will join existing Advisory Board members Kenn MacMillan, Don Christie, Craig van Wegen, Charlie Grant, John Anasis and IPO Wealth’s newly appointed CEO, Ewan Laughlin. Advisory board members provide Mayfair 101 with access to a comprehensive, relevant pool of knowledge and experience to support the Group’s corporate strategy. They also offer the group a world-class contact network to support the Group, and its portfolio companies to achieve their goals.
Mayfair 101 is an independent investment and corporate advisory group that was established in 2009 and now operates a portfolio of wholly and partly-owned subsidiaries in 11 countries, including Australia, the United Kingdom, Israel, Singapore, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and the United States of America.
Initially focussed on technology-related investments, the Group’s investment capabilities have evolved over time in line with an enhanced investment ecosystem that provides investors with confidence and clients with substantial value.
Maureen Jordan
Ms Jordan has over 30 years’ experience and is recognised as one of Australia’s prominent women business leaders, having been inducted to the Australian Business Women’s Hall of Fame in 1996, as well as being a finalist in the Sydney Business Review’s Business Woman of the Year in 2003.
Ms Jordan is CEO of Switzer Financial Group, one of Australia’s leading financial and business publishers where she and her husband, Peter Switzer, have developed a substantial business over the last three decades that specialises in providing financial and business content to a significant audience of Australian investors.
Ms Jordan has an intimate understanding of what is required to develop sustainable businesses that attract and retain great talent, and importantly, the leadership qualities required to lead teams through growth and change.
Ms Jordan holds a Bachelor of Arts (Economics) and a Law Degree (Honours). She has held Editor-in- Chief roles for esteemed publications such as Charter Magazine and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia. She has also authored several books, including Women Entrepreneurs (which she wrote for the Federal Office of Women), Small Business Start Up Guide (published by Allen & Unwin) and Finding And Managing Your Mortgage (Wiley Publishing).
Amit Pau
Amit Pau is a seasoned technology, media and telecommunications Executive Director with over 25 years of expertise in the TMT industry. He has an equally impressive record in building and funding companies with a number of successful IPOs and exits. Whether it is in a corporate leadership role or an entrepreneurial environment, Amit consistently drives innovative ‘go to’ market strategies to deliver quantum growth. He addresses audiences around the world on topics related to innovation, digital transformation, mobile technology and business scaling.
Amit has transformed multiple entrepreneurial companies, mentoring them from concept stage to scaling their operations for successful exits. Amit had a meteoric rise in business; by the age of 27, he was running the billion dollar plus marketing and product development team at AT&T headquarters in America.
Amit was Global MD of Vodafone’s Fortune 500 Business Unit and on the Board of Vodafone Spain (whilst listed on the Madrid Stock Exchange). At Vodafone, he created Vodafone Global Product Management and Channel BU, generating over £1 billion of revenue. Amit was also instrumental in creating strategic OEM partnerships for Vodafone with BMW, Dell, IBM and Hewlett Packard. In particular, under his leadership, his team created leading M2M solutions for the auto industry.
He has also served on the board of twelve international companies listed on the Stock Exchanges in London, Madrid and Israel, plus boards of private companies in India, Norway, Belgium and the UK. Amit was also involved as a Non-Executive Director in a number of AIM IPOs and trade sales, raising over £250m and mentoring the founders with respect to seven successful exits. He also advised the Board & CEO of Followap on their innovation and marketing strategy, following which the business received funding from Sequoia Capital and then subsequently sold to Neustar for a $149M.
Amit is an active contributor on BBC, CNBC and Bloomberg with focus on the technology sector.
Toby Ralph
Toby is a widely recognised leader in public relations, marketing and politics. He has consulted to Presidents, Prime Ministers, Premiers, Boards and businesses on their corporate, political and marketing strategies. He brings a substantial depth of knowledge and invaluable strategic connections to Mayfair 101 and its portfolio companies.
Toby has worked on around 50 elections across three continents, including all of Australia’s federal elections for John Howard as Prime Minister. He featured on the Business Review Weekly list of ’50 Most Influential People in Australian Business’ and The Power Index’s ‘Five (relatively) unknown people running Australia’.
Toby has been a Special External Adviser to the United Nations and has controlled or had input on around $1 billion of communications campaigns, many of which have been internationally focused.
Sir Philip Thomas
Sir Philip Thomas had a 34-year career in the British Diplomatic Service, with particular emphasis on dealing with the Soviet and post-Soviet Union. He is widely versed in defence and security issues and was press spokesman at the UK’s Representation to the EU in the late 1980s when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister. Other roles include directing economic relations with Britain’s two most important trade and investment partners, the US and Germany. He was also British High Commissioner to Nigeria from 2001-2004.
Subsequently, he was appointed as a senior advisor to Royal Dutch Shell (Shell Global) with an emphasis on the company’s projects in sensitive regions including Russia, the Caspian basin and Nigeria. He later joined an investment company that sought to manage large areas of tropical forest to reduce deforestation and carbon emissions, producing a return to investors by generating carbon offsets.
He has been a board member of DAF Trucks NV since 2009 and was formerly on the board of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. He was made a CMG in 1997 and knighted in 2003.
Sir Philip holds a Masters in history from Cambridge University.