Retail Think Tank Members - Profiles

Nick Bubb, Pali International

Nick Bubb is a Retail Analyst at the stockbrokers Pali International and has been a retailing analyst in the City for over 25 years. He is a well-known commentator on UK retailing in the press and is also very knowledgeable about shopping centres.

Nick began his career in 1977 at stockbrokers Rowe & Pitman (now Known as UBS) and became their Retail Analyst in January 1978. He moved to stockbrokers Scrimgeour, Kemp-Gee (later known as Citicorp Scrimgeour Vickers) in October 1979 as a UK Retail Analyst, and in 1986 he Became Head of their No 1 ranked Retail Team. Nick was No 1 in the "Institutional Investor" magazine 1988 poll of Stores Sector analysts.
He left Scrimgeours in 1988 to become Head of Retail Research at Morgan Stanley in London and then joined Societe Generale's SG Securities in London in 1997 as Head of Pan-European Retail Research. He moved to Evolution Securities at the beginning of 2003 as their UK Retail analyst and joined Pali International in January 2007, based in Mayfair (a convenient location for both Pali's hedge fund clients and the West End shops!).

Nick Bubb graduated from Christ Church, Oxford (Philosophy, Politics And Economics). He is married, with 2 children and lives in Richmond. Outside work, Nick's main interest is in cricket.

Paul Clarke, National Director, Barclays Retail & Wholesale Sectors

Paul has worked for Barclays for over 36 years holding a variety of senior roles in business banking.

Paul currently leads the Retail and Wholesale specialist team and as such has responsibility for in excess of £9bn worth of debt within the sector. Under Paul's stewardship, the team, which provides banking services exclusively to retailers and wholesalers, has grown into the pre-eminent banking team serving the retail and wholesale markets and currently works with 34 of the Top 50 Retailers (Retail Week 2005 Survey) by UK Sales.

Paul was also a key figure in the implementation of the industry focused teams within Barclays.

Paul is a well established industry commentator and regularly contributes to publications such as Retail Week, Drapers and the Financial Times. He has written on a wide range of industry issues, recent examples have included the future of the Homewares market and retailing in China. In addition Paul is a regular commentator on the ONS Retail Sales Figures.

Paul's standing within the industry has been recognised by Drapers, the trade magazine for the fashion industry, which placed Paul within the Top 100 Influential people on the UK high street for two years running and voted him number one Deal Maker in the same survey.

Outside of work Paul enjoys fine wine and golf, although experience has taught him that these do not always go well together.

Sian Davies, Henley Centre HeadlightVision

Siân Davies is Chief Executive at Henley Centre HeadlightVision and responsible for driving the business forward. In addition to overseeing the running of the company, Siân works directly on many of our key client relationships.

Eighteen years in marketing and consultancy have given Siân an eclectic experience base and a deep understanding of the challenges involved in creating an outside-in customer centric organisation. She brings a rare combination of analytical rigour and futures insight to all her assignments. Before joining Henley Centre Headlight Vision, Siân worked for Mercer Management Consulting in London and Boston, rising from Analyst to Principal. Outside work, Sian is a keen follower of contemporary art and photography.

Prof. John Dawson, Universities of Edinburgh and Stirling

John Dawson holds chairs at The Universities of Edinburgh and Stirling, Scotland. He is a visiting Professor at ESADE in Barcelona where he has research projects and participates on regular retail management programmes. John is also Distinguished Professor at University of Marketing and Distribution Sciences in Japan where he has a number of research projects funded by Japanese Government. His degrees are in Geography, Town Planning, and Retailing. Academic research interests are across retailing where he has been actively studying retail activity since the mid 1960s. Over this extended period he has worked on projects with a number of large and small companies and with UK, Scottish government and European Commission in addition to more traditional academic research. He is a Board Member of the company that operates the shops in the Museum of Scotland. John has written widely in books, major reports and papers in journals. He is a frequent contributor to management seminars and conferences. Current research is on retailer internationalisation, marketing strategies in retailing, retailer-supplier relationships, and the measurement of the retail sector. Most of this current research is in Europe and East Asia. He has also held visiting positions elsewhere in Europe, South Africa, USA, Australia and Japan.

Dr. Tim Denison, SPSL

Dr Tim Denison BSc MSc PhD MCIM is Director of Knowledge Management at SPSL the UK's market leader in performance improvement systems for retailers. He is also a regular commentator, broadcaster and conference speaker on retail matters, particularly those related to behavioural issues. Trained formally as a social scientist and a marketer, Tim has worked for SPSL for 10 years. Before that he managed the Centre for Advanced Research in Marketing at Cranfield School of Management, where he specialised in retail and consumer branding issues, working on key research and policy initiatives on behalf of organisations such as the European Commission, BP, BT Cellnet and Ford.

Helen Dickinson, KPMG

Helen Dickinson is a Partner & UK Head of Retail at KPMG. She is regularly quoted in the trade and national media on retail sales trends and other sector issues and also comments on industry topics in her weekly column in Marketing magazine.

KPMG is an associate member of the British Retail Consortium and Helen works closely with the BRC in a number of areas including the sponsorship and administration of the BRC-KPMG Retail Sales Monitor. She has focused on retail since 1995 and been a Partner since 2002. She works with many retailers across all sectors including food, clothing, furniture and department stores.

As Head of Retail for KPMG since December 2004, Helen has overall responsibility for leading and developing KPMG's retail practice in the UK including development of multidisciplinary value propositions focused on the sector.

Helen is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales and is based in London.

Richard Hyman, Verdict Consulting

Richard is the Managing Director of Verdict Consulting; and prior to its acquisition by Datamonitor in 2005, Richard was Chairman of Verdict Research the company which he founded in 1984. Richard is one of the UK's most influential analysts and is a frequent contributor to both television and radio programmes as well as being much quoted in the trade and national press.

He is regularly invited to be a guest speaker at retail conferences and often acts as a special advisor on legal matters with a retail slant. Prior to establishing Verdict, Richard worked for five years as Editorial and Marketing Director of Mintel and previous to this as a Researcher at the Financial Times.

Vicky Redwood, Capital Economics

Vicky Redwood is a UK economist at Capital Economics, specialising in the consumer and retail sectors. Vicky examines the forces acting on consumer finances and spending and assesses how likely economic developments will affect the various sub-sectors of spending. She is frequently quoted in the press and appears regularly on television and radio.

Vicky joined Capital Economics in 2003 from the Bank of England, where she was a UK economist specialising in the UK corporate and household sectors. She contributed to Bank of England publications including the Financial Stability Review, as well as writing working papers on household balance sheets and business failures. Before working at the Bank, Vicky studied Economics at Oxford and Warwick.

Mark Teale, CB Richard Ellis

Mark Teale joined CB Richard Ellis (Hillier Parker) in 1986. Initially setting up a retail project consultancy team, Mark was appointed Head of Research in 1989. Mark's research team specialises in retail property related consumer market research and forecasting but covers all aspects of retail research including information development for market analysis systems, shopping development viability studies, store location analysis and benchmarking.

Mark was responsible, in the early 1990s, on behalf of the Property Manager's Association, for establishing the industry's first shopping centre trading audits for rent review purposes. Mark also pioneered The National Survey of Local Shopping Patterns (NSLSP) survey, the largest continuous household survey programme of shopping destination preferences undertaken in the retail industry. The NSLSP survey is widely used by leading store groups for locational analysis purposes and by property/planning organisations for impact forecasting.

Mark is now primarily concerned with the development of local forecasting and benchmarking applications and related retail property market measurement applications.

Prior to joining CB Richard Ellis, Mark was employed as a journalist at Morgan Grampian Construction Press, writing on commercial property matters. He won RICS, ISVA and BBC awards for journalism in 1985 and 1986.