Duncan Reed, Director

I founded this firm in order to respond to the developing needs of a growing market. It is still developing and still growing! Specifically, by providing an obviously independent service but one offered by someone who is nevertheless an experienced ‘board practitioner’. The demand for this – and the value in it –  has remained consistent over the last decade or so.

Against this background, my career has involved over twenty -five years’ specialisation in board advisory services, first in executive search and then in board evaluation, latterly with Spencer Stuart, prior to building Condign from 2011.

Throughout, my focus has always been on working with company boards, advising them and acting for them by assessing their needs and seeking to fulfil them, with the evaluation (and, at one time, recruitment) of chairmen, senior independent directors, committee chairmen and non-executive directors, as well as executive directors such as CEOs and CFOs.

As a result, advising boards in those areas where ‘processes’ meet ‘people’, is a key skill and differentiator.

Examples to show the diversity of our client list would include the AA, Ashmore, Ashtead, the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), Cancer Research UK, CNO Financial Group Inc., Crossrail, Dairy Crest, Dunelm Group, Enterprise Inns (EIG), Experian, FirstGroup, Foreign & Colonial Commercial Property Trust (FCPT, now BCPT), Go-Ahead Group, Greencoat UK Wind (UKW), Grosvenor Estates, Halma, Imperial War Museums (IWM), Inmarsat, International Public Partnerships (INPP), International Workplace Group (IWG), Mitie Group, NatWest Group (formerly RBS), NEST (the National Employment Savings Trust), Northgate, the NDA (Nuclear Decommissioning Authority), Ofcom, P2PGI (now absorbed in to Waterfall Asset Management), Pennon, QinetiQ, Ricardo, Sequoia Economic Infrastructure Income Fund (SEQI), SIG, Sophos, Southern Water, Speedy Hire, Starling Bank and Wincanton.

I graduated in Classics from Jesus College, Cambridge, and hold a master’s degree.