Team

Clifford Giles – Executive Director

Clifford is a dynamic entrepreneur with more than 25 years’ commercial, M & A and capital-raising experience. He operates internationally across Finance, Healthcare, Clean Tech and FMCG sectors. Excels in identifying and creating new revenue streams and/or building on existing business platforms to take products to market by maximising his network of global contacts.

Since arriving from Australia in 2003, Clifford has invested in 6 businesses, taking some of those through to trade sale or IPO. Over this period, he has built a strong network of investors, mostly made up of HNW, family offices and institutional investors in the UK, Europe, Singapore, Asia and North America.

He is most notably recognised for leading those companies to pursuing exits which is how he came to form IPO Capital in 2012. IPO Capital is a boutique investment firm providing growth capital to innovative, high growth private companies committed to an IPO within a 2-year horizon. He has led the firm’s originating & investment process and was responsible for cultivating the firm’s external advisors to bring those investments to market. He has been responsible for providing access to more than £50m of capital within this period, for those companies he has invested or advised.

In 2019, Clifford contracted head & neck cancer, which unfortunately led to closing the IPO Capital fund down so he could focus entirely on his health and be with his family. Fast forward 3 years, and he has made considerable strides towards a full recovery. Whilst still undergoing treatment, he is now strong enough to be back at his desk. He joined Propel Capital Limited in December 2022 and together with founder Mark Butterfield and a small team, the firm provides access to growth capital to those entrepreneurs seeking to scale their businesses.

Clifford serves as a director or advisor to several key businesses and continues to provide leadership in attracting capital or monetizing assets for entrepreneurs. Originally from Australia, educated at Cranbrook School, Sydney, Clifford is married, with two children and is an avid rugby enthusiast.

Mark Butterfield – Founder and Executive Director

Mark is a highly experienced finance and operations director with specialist skills in start-up and early-stage businesses in the provision of funding for growth or recovery - with wide-ranging NED mentoring and corporate guidance skills for entrepreneurs and SMEs. He is a professionally qualified (ACIS/ACG) executive with over 30 years’ experience in a variety of B2B environments – mainly in the Technology, IT and Financial Services sectors. His particular expertise lies in start-up and early-stage businesses. Before meeting Clifford in 2012, he was instrumental in setting up a specialist car company in the 1980’s, two leasing companies and most significantly as part of a small management team who created & built-up IT PLC to a turnover of £14m & PBT of £1.8m per annum.

This background has given Mark extensive experience in managing change, rapid-growth and the challenges that face fast-developing businesses – such as working capital constraints, fund raising and the need to implement and evolve business models and financial systems. During his career, he has been involved in several MBO, MBI and IPO processes, giving him extensive experience of due diligence, capital raising and company acquisitions/disposals.

After IPO Capital, he set up Propel Capital Limited and he currently holds investments in, and is a director of, a number of SMEs in a wide range of sectors.

Richard Beresford - Inhouse Legal Counsel

Dr Michael Green - Analyst

Michael is a proactive analyst who has gained a broadly-based knowledge of growth companies through extensive research as well as sitting down with the management and taking the time to really understand companies.

He began working in the City in the 1980s as a financial analyst with stockbrokers Buckmaster & Moore and then HSBC-owned Greenwell Montagu Securities. Subsequently, he was involved in analysing a wide range of growth companies and became Head of Research at Everett Financial.

Michael is always seeking to unearth exciting investment opportunities and has a track record of negotiate deals at attractive valuations. Michael possesses an extensive network of contacts throughout the City, which stem from taking part in financing and buying lines of stock from the major players.

Since 2006, he has worked as an independent analyst, using these skills to research growth companies across a broad range of sectors for a variety of clients including stockbrokers, companies, corporate finance boutiques, private equity players and independent research houses. In addition, he has been working closely with both pre-IPO and quoted companies to raise their profiles.

Ben Boateng - Corporate Finance

Ben Boateng has significant cross – border transactional M&A expertise across the industrial and technology sectors and continues to sit on the Board of Africa Mobile Networks, which is a sub Saharan African infrastructure solar - powered towers business, which has been invested in by Metier Private Equity, CDC, Facebook and Intelsat and has significant partnerships with MTN, Orange and Vodafone.

He has 20 years of banking experience, and has held senior positions at BNP Paribas, Fortis Bank and GE Capital across the M&A, asset-based lending, leverage finance, and Supply Chain finance sectors. Until recently he was a Senior Director at ACAP GP LLC which is a US - based special situations Hedge Fund that focuses on growth capital, trade finance and mid - market cross border asset-based lending transactions in the buy - out and accelerated M&A sector. At present he is a Venture Partner at ODBA, a Sub Saharan African – focused Venture Capital firm, that has high growth companies in its portfolio.

In 2014 he established his own debt advisory business, Monument Corporate Finance, to advise corporates on cross border M&A and supply chain finance.