The Board is pleased to announce the appointment of David Kilgour, FCA, as Chief Financial Officer of the Group. David qualified with PwC in 1987 and his subsequent career history includes senior divisional finance roles with AMEC plc for five years and before that with United Utilities PLC for eight years. He will join the Group on 6 November 2017. However, in order to ensure a smooth transition, Hugh Cawley will remain as CFO until the announcement of the Group's preliminary results for the year ended 30 September 2017, expected on or around 12 December, at which point David will succeed him and Hugh will step down from the Board. The Board would like to thank Hugh for his substantial contribution to the success of the equity refinancing completed earlier in the year.
The Board also announces that Colin Davies, Non-Executive Director has notified his intention to step down from the Board at the end of October. The Board would like to thank Colin for his contribution over many years.
The Board is also pleased to announce that, in line with its expressed strategy of focusing on Claims, Disputes and Expert Witness work, it has recently concluded the sale of Initiate Consulting Ltd (“Initiate”) to PDSI Limited. The consideration, payable in cash and the amount of which will be finally determined after certification of the completion balance sheet, is expected to be something less than £0.2m, resulting in a non-cash write down of goodwill and intangibles of approximately £0.9m. It is estimated that Initiate broke even at an operating level on sales of £3.26m in the financial year ended 30 September 2017. The sale of Initiate concludes the realignment of the group to focus exclusively on its core business areas and no further business disposals are currently contemplated.