A Unique Network of Expertise and Experience
Our executives have spent most of their professional careers involved with the region, recognising many years ago the importance and potential of this area of the world. We believe that no other company brings together the same depth of multi-disciplinary expertise and practical business experience.
Our Directors, Advisors, Associates and Staff have varied commercial, technical, business, educational and real life experiences. All have worked in both large and small corporates and are committed to make a difference allowing our clients to change, expand and grow. The academic, business and financial backgrounds of the people assisting you, as well as their life and work experiences are provided as part of our services.
We have an independent 'Talent Pool' of additional recognised business people who add value to our organisation and who contribute further business accumen, contacts and skill sets to our clients.
Lindley Edwards - Group CEO
Lindley is a specialist adviser in merger, acquisition, divestments, fund raising, strategic consulting and licensing for growth public and private companies.
She has a track record of successful advising to private and public companies. Previously Lindley was a State Manager (Vice-President) with Citibank. Prior to this position she spent nine years with Macquarie bank and was an Associate Director with the Corporate Banking Division. Lindley has also worked on a secondment basis for Boston Consulting Group and for the Victorian State Government Project.
She is an accountant and a Fellow of FINSIA. Lindley holds two undergraduate degrees, one in Accounting and the other in Banking and Finance. She also holds a Graduate Diploma in Governance of ASX Listed Companies. Lindley is a non-executive Director and Advisory Board member of various organisations.
Lindley has been a state finalist in the Telstra Businesswomen’s awards for Private Sector less than 100 employees. In the year 2000 Lindley was admitted to the Australian Businesswomen’s Hall of Fame. Her publications include:
- Building a Winning Team
- From Invention to Investment
- Becoming Investment Ready
- Risk, Risk Management and Closing the Deal
- Make the Right Connections
Karen Dado - Managing Director, Health and Life Sciences
Karen Dado has spent over twenty years providing management consulting and corporate advisory services in the health care and life sciences sectors. She spent 15 years with PricewaterhouseCoopers in their London and Sydney offices, advising health and biotech clients. Karen has extensive experience in undertaking: strategic reviews, commercial feasibility studies,
cost benefit analyses and risk management reviews in the life sciences sector. Clients have included private equity firms, universities and research institutes, rural research and development corporations, industry associations, pharmaceutical companies and biotech companies. Karen is a member of Merck's Science Alliance providing commercial advice on potential biopharmaceutical investments. Specific examples of her work are provided below:
- Analyse performance and understand key value drivers
- Develop strategies for differentiation to maximise value
- Achieve sustainability and effective commercialisation
- Benchmarking or audit to identify gap between strategic intent and delivery
- Redesign of business processes including time-to-market to improve their efficiency and effectiveness
- Best practice governance and reporting frameworks to sustain performance gains
- Independent experts reports, commercial due diligence and business planning to support commercialisation
- Capital raising, sale and acquisition and integration planning to identify the associated synergies and costs.
David Duckett - Managing Director, Structured Finance
David Duckett is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia and spent over 10 years with Andersens during which he was involved with clients in Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia as well as in Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
In 1975 he commenced an 18 year involvement in the international food industry, including 7 years with Goodman Fielder. During this period he was Head of Taxation and later Head of Strategic Planning, both global roles.
Throughout his career David has had extensive involvement in Mergers & Acquisitions as well as capital raisings, structured finance and other areas of corporate advisory activities.
David is also a non executive director of a number of mid size private companies.
It is this experience and expertise he brings to AFG Venture Group.
Michael Fay - Managing Director, Education Services
Michael Fay is an international education specialist who has lived and worked between Asia and Australia for over 25 years. He continues to be a leading member of Australia's international education and training sector and was the co-founder and Managing Director of Insearch Language Centre at the University of Technology Sydney from 1987-1999. Insearch has been one of the major success stories of Australia's international education sector and was the first public private partnership in international education in Australia. In 1997 Insearch Language Centre won the Citibank award for “Best Australian Service Activity in Asia”. In 2000 Michael was made a Fellow of UTS for his contribution to the profile and reputation of the university. He advises a varied group of public and private sector educational and media organisations as well as government departments and peak industry bodies. His focus areas are on strategic marketing strategies, establishing and managing offshore education sector investments and building cross sector networks and linkages. He is active in M and A work in the education services sector.
Gordon Hart - Managing Director, Equities
Gordon Hart has been running Venture Group Equities as Managing Director since 2004. During this period he has raised in excess of $200 million. He brings to the role over 28 years experience in the stockbroking industry, having worked with stockbrokers Bridges Son & Shepherd, Paul Morgan & Co, BT Stockbroking, Bain and Co and for the past 10 years was co-owner of Shaw Stockbroking.
Through Venture Group Equities, Gordon provides a range of corporate advisory services including mergers and acquisitions, equity raisings, advice on restructures and path to market advice and implementation. Additionally he has experience in finance, IPO's, investor relations, project development and corporate strategy with listed and unlisted emerging companies.
Glen Robinson - Managing Director, Asia Advisory
Glen Robinson's experience and expertise lie in the manufacturing, processing and distribution areas, with specific emphasis on business management and strategic planning. Glen has more than 20 years' experience in management consultancy and has worked with a wide range of industries from agriculture through to manufacturing and distribution industries. He gained his South East Asian experience as chief executive officer for the Asian subsidiaries and joint ventures of a major International manufacturing and marketing organisation. Glen sits on the board of many Asian related business organisations and has for many years advised a number of Foreign Investment Boards in the ASEAN region.
Tony Hughes - Senior Consultant
Tony Hughes has worked in digital media consulting and international education for over 20 years.
He was a lead consultant in Europe for the International Development Program of Australian Universities and Colleges (IDP) and on behalf of Austrade (The Australian Trade Commission) and the IDP he gave a series of seminars on Australian education at universities in Europe and provided digital media consultancy services for Australian private and public sector educational organizations recruiting students from the European market.
He was Director of Mondolingua, the international education conference and fair in Geneva from 1993 to 1995 and developed a number of mutli-media based English language courses for Swiss television as well as audio courses for the Institut Victor Ebner in Geneva. During this time he also provided consultancy services for a number of universities and colleges. In 1995 he co-founded The Digital Education Network Ltd and started one of the Internet's earliest and most successful international digitally-driven education portals, EduFind.
He has written extensively on digital media topics and has been published in leading journals including the International Journal of Education, written an award winning online English grammar and has been a speaker at such events as the BASELT Conference (UK), The International Education Marketing Conference (Geneva), and The ARELS Conference (UK). He has designed and delivered digital media development, communications, cross-cultural, and 'soft-skills' training programs to clients in Germany, the USA, Scotland, and England.
Since 1995 he has worked on digital media projects for e-learning and educational marketing and has provided leading organizations with consultancy regarding 'best use' of the Internet for marketing, online learning and training, delivery of courses, and online recruitment.
Through AFG Venture Group he is currently developing a global 'train the trainer' online learning platform for the International Award for Young People (formerly, the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme).
He is also CEO of the Australian registered digital media and online learning company praxMatrix Pty Ltd (www.praxmatrix.com.au), and Executive Media Director of The Digital Education Network Pty Ltd in the UK.
Michael Shur - Senior Consultant
Michael joined the Group in 2006. His vision for building sustainable business enterprises has been a product of his years as a successful entrepreneur.
Michael founded the Dashing Printing Group in 1980 which grew from a start up to a group of 18 retail and outsourced outlets with 130 employees. It was sold to a listed company in 2000.
Michael serves on the board of many and varied organisations and has extensive expertise in Start Up Incubators. He has been the President of the Australia Israel Chamber of Commerce, Chairman of the Information Industry Business Advisory Board for the NSW Department of State and Regional Development and an assessor for the Australian Technology Showcase.
He is the Regional Director for the World Presidents Organisation (WPO) and member of the International Board. He is a Director of the national committee for the Australia Israel Jewish Affairs Council.
Mitchell Brown - Analyst & Adviser
Mitchell Brown has a degree in Agricultural Economics from the University of Sydney where he majored in Economics, Finance and Agricultural Economics. He has also completed a Graduate Diploma of Applied Finance and Investment at FINSIA.
Mitchell joined AFG in 2001 and his role includes managing and undertaking research for a variety of projects, including assisting in the management and execution of mandates.
Sunil Aranha - Associate
Sunil has over 28 years in Corporate Banking and Trade Finance and Entrepreneurial business experience holding senior management positions in Citibank (Asia and Australia), Commonwealth Bank and EFIC (Australia's Government Export Credit Agency). As well as acquiring and operating multiple small businesses in the early 2000's including an assignment as chief executive officer of a start up media technology Joint Venture in the late 90's.
Sunil transferred with Citibank from India to Australia in 1990 after having worked in Singapore and Hong kong and has continued to maintain an extensive network of decision maker contacts across banking, Government and Industry in Asia and Australia.
On an Associate basis he joined AFG Venture Group in 2011 to focus on assisting businesses that wanted to build regional operations to grow, particularly in the key areas of:
- Opportunity analysis and market entry/exit strategies
- Business implementation which includes assistance to develop distribution channels as well as identify, select and set up joint ventures and partnerships
- Procuring regulatory approvals in country
- Financing and structural advice
Andrew Bald - Associate
Andrew Bald brings over 25 years experience in merchant banking and corporate finance. He has advised and assisted a number of private and public (i.e. ASX listed) companies with their financing requirements (both debt and equity), over a variety of sectors including natural resources such as coal, gas and gold, IT and food/agribusiness.
Prior to operating within the corporate finance environment, Andrew gained 16 years experience with a range of international investment and merchant banks advising mainly ASX top 200 companies on managing their balance sheet and trading risks via the use of derivatives as well as working with the respective corporate finance departments on large project financing transactions.
Andrew has started a number of companies including the Pisces Group (founder and CEO), which was formed in August 1995 to commercialise marine aquaculture in NSW. The Pisces project, located on the east coast of NSW, north of Pt Stephens, ran for more than 8 years with a project budget in excess of $10M. The company successfully farmed Snapper and Mulloway and developed new markets for aquaculture product in Australia and overseas. Andrew was an inaugural member of the NSW Minister's Aquaculture Advisory Council.
Andrew was also the founding CEO of a vineyard and wine making operation located in Beechworth, Victoria, which is now successfully producing wines as the Indigo Wine Company.
He is currently an advisor to Sports Drug Testing International, a newly formed but rapidly growing drug testing company with contracts including the ICC (Cricket), IRB (Rugby), Cycling and AFL and works as a consultant to Indigenous Business Australia, a Federal Government body which provides funding assistance to business owned and managed by Indigenous Australians.
Selwyn D'Souza - Associate
Selwyn has over fifteen years experience in the managment consulting and investment advisory industries and ten years in shipping and transport. Specialising in strategy development and business planning, Selwyn has successfully started and exited two startup ventures in Hospitality and Technology.
Selwyn is a senior fellow at the Melbourne Business School where he completed his MBA with distinction and is currently an adjunct fellow teaching the Managing New Ventures and Integrative Projects MBA elective. He also holds a degree in Marine Engineering and a Chief Engineers License in Marine Engineering from the UK and Australia.
Graham Libbesson - Associate
Graham Libbesson has commerce and law degrees. He has been a chartered accountant for over 30 years, specialising in taxation, management, M & A restructuring, and funding (equity and debt). He was senior tax partner and managing partner at PKF Sydney.
Currently, he is involved on a part-time basis with Pitcher Partners, Sydney as leader of the ICT industry focus group; and is active in consulting regarding tax matters, particularly in relation to transactions, for the ICT industry.
Graham has significant practical experience in the ICT sector, by advisory and hands-on director roles with private and listed software and IT services companies. He advises in relation to transactions, management, valuations, due diligence and tax for the sector.
He was a director of two international software companies, eServGlobal Limited (ASX and AIM) and ComOps Limited (ASX). He is Chairman of Each Coast Minerals NL (ASX) and Artemis Resources Limited (ASX). He is a director of various private IT companies.
Dirk Odendaal - Associate
Dirk is a consultant with AFG Venture Group and is a specialist in Information Technology and software. With a background in advisory services, turnarounds and venture creations and exits, Dirk founded Cresta Homes, a successful business developing land and building homes in and around Johannesburg in his native South Africa.
Since then, Dirk has gone on to co-found Medinet, a supplier of e-commerce services to medical doctors in South Africa. The company went on to claim an industry leading position and in December of 1996 it was sold. In 1997 Dirk founded Integrated Technology Holdings Ltd, which developed leading healthcare technologies in South Africa and was listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in February 1998. In 2000 Dirk founded X/procureTM Software SA. X/procureTM allows pharmacies and other healthcare providers to procure any of their pharmaceutical and other stock requirements making use of a software exchange or "portal".
John Weste - Associate
John Weste is a seasoned international business executive, having held executive positions at Andersen, Gartner, Tata Consultancy Services, and Korda Mentha, with over 25 years "hands-on" expertise in executing major change programs at a variety of global and local business entities. John brings to an organization strong leadership capacity and capability coupled with deep functional expertise in strategy development, articulation and execution, operational design and process streamlining, technology design and application, change management program development and implementation, and performance management and control. John has an extensive background of experience across a number of industries including Banking and Financial Services, Professional Services, Retailing, Manufacturing, Healthcare, Higher Education, Process Industries, Oil and Gas, ICT, and FMCG. John is also a regular presenter/ contributor on strategic management and technology issues across the globe to individual companies, at external conferences, and in the general media.
John has an enviable track record of execution success with notable achievements including:
- Building a highly profitable management consulting practice as Lead Partner for Andersen in Central Europe;
- Executing a business transformation program at a global banking group head-quartered in India;
- Executing a complex post-acquisition integration program across 7 European countries for a global FMCG group;
- Re-building a core international business within a major global IT firm;
- Re-structuring a major European pulp and paper business in order to avoid potential liquidation; and
- Building a "start-up" manufacturer into a major European heating systems business.
