company director
After qualifying as a Chartered Accountant, Jonathan had a 10 year career in various financial positions with the Jardine Matheson Group in Asia and Australia. Latterly he was financial controller of an associated company, Allied Food Industries, which manufactured Van Houten chocolates in Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia. He then spent 16 years with James Capel & Co (latterly HSBC Investment Bank) in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and India – as managing director in the latter two appointments. Jonathan specialised in ‘privatisation’, assignments in the UK including Rolls Royce and Britoil; followed by eight privatisations in Hungary post the collapse of the USSR (working out of Frankfurt, commuting to Budapest). Taking a break from the City in 2002, he took an interim assignment as chief executive of a country legal partnership for a year. Jonathan then returned to the City to join Close Brothers where for five years he used his extensive overseas experience to develop international distribution for their specialised open and closed-ended property funds. Now based in Dorset, Jonathan actively develops his own business portfolio, including a small farm in Ukraine with three Ukrainian partners – exporting soya to Indonesia and China – and vegetables to Europe. Jonathan was a Governor of Knighton House prep school for 10 years. He has four daughters, two of whom attended Sherborne Girls.