Team Members

Robin Lawther is currently a Non-Executive Director at Nordea Bank and Ashurst LLP and a member of the Aon M&A Advisory Board.  In addition, she works with her own privately owned student housing developments in the US, UK, and Germany.

Ms. Lawther is an international banker with extensive experience of global markets and financial institutions.  She worked at J.P.Morgan in London and New York for over 20 years in a number of senior positions in investment banking.  Her roles included Head of the European Financial Institution Mergers and Acquisitions Execution Team and Senior Country Officer and Head of Investment Banking for the Nordic Region.  She specialised in mergers and acquisitions and capital raising.

Ms. Lawther holds a B.A. Honours in Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an M.Sc. in Accountancy and Finance from the London School of Economics.  She is actively involved in women’s mentoring programmes and is a supporter of several London theatres.

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Andrew was appointed Non-Executive Director of UK Government Investments in July 2019.
Andrew spent most of his executive career in the energy industry; first with BP and then Chief Executive Officer of RWE Npower. Andrew was the Senior Trustee of Macmillan Cancer Support and a member of the Steering Group on the Hampton Alexander Review. He is a Fellow of the Energy Institute. Andrew was previously Chair of Severn Trent plc and Chair of Elementis plc, a FTSE 250 chemicals company. He was a Non-Executive Director and Senior Independent Director of Wolseley plc (now Ferguson Plc) from 2004-2013.

Current additional appointments:

• Chair of Sage Group Plc, having been a member of the Board from 1 May 2021.

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Caroline Thomson is the chair of Digital UK, the body responsible for Freeview, the digital terrestrial television platform. Until October 2020 she was also chair of Oxfam. Alongside these chairmanships, she is a non-executive director of  Videndum plc (and chair of the remuneration committee). Caroline is a trustee of Tullie House Gallery in Cumbria. In the arts world, Caroline stepped down from her role as deputy chair of the National Gallery in August 2016 and retired as Executive Director of English National Ballet in March 2016. She remains a trustee of the ENB and of the National Gallery Trust. Originally a journalist, until 2012 Caroline was Chief Operating Officer at the BBC — having served twelve years as a member of the Executive Board. As Chief Operating Officer, she was the Deputy Director General and was responsible for all the non-programme parts of the BBC except finance. She has an honorary degree from the University of York and is an honorary fellow of the University of Cumbria. She is also a deputy lieutenant in the county of Cumbria.

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Charles Roxburgh is the Second Permanent Secretary at Her Majesty’s Treasury. He took up this position in July 2016. In this role, he is responsible, at the Treasury, for all issues relating to growth, productivity, infrastructure, financial services and financial stability. He is also a member of the Executive Management Board at the Treasury.

Prior to joining HM Treasury in 2013, Charles spent 26 years at McKinsey & Company. In his consulting work, he focused primarily on serving clients in the financial services sector. He was based in London for most of his career, but also spent seven years working in McKinsey’s New York Financial Institutions practice. His client work spanned retail banking, corporate and investment banking, insurance and asset management.

He held a number of leadership positions at McKinsey, including: co-head of the Global Strategy Practice; head of the UK Financial Institutions Group; and leader of the Global Corporate and Investment Banking Practice. In 2009, he became the London-based Director of the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI). At MGI, he led research into global capital markets, the impact of deleveraging on economic growth as well as a number of research projects into growth at the country and regional level. In 2011, he was elected to the global board of McKinsey & Company.

He was educated at Cambridge University, where he read Classics. He holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

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In addition to being UKGI’s General Counsel, Lucie is also the UK Delegate to the OECD’s Working Party on State Ownership and Privatisation Practices. Prior to joining UKGI in 2015, she worked as a lawyer at Clifford Chance, Lloyds Banking Group and the United Nations.

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James joined UK Government Investments (formerly the Shareholder Executive) in March 2014. He has worked on a variety of corporate finance and governance projects, including government investments into industry and government asset sales. Major government sales worked on include the two public equity offerings of Royal Mail shares that removed Royal Mail from public sector ownership and advising the Department for Transport on Network Rail’s sale of c. 5,000 railway arches. He has recently been advising the Department of Health and Social Care on transactions relating to the provision of indemnity cover for GPs and working with the UK’s Vaccine Task Force on negotiating agreements with vaccine manufacturers to secure vaccines and manufacturing capacity as part of the UK’s response to Covid-19.

Prior to joining UKGI, James spent ten years working in corporate finance, first on the sell side in investment banking and, immediately prior to joining UKGI, on the buy side, at a hedge fund. He started his career at Bank of America, working in London and New York.

James holds an Economics degree from St Catharine’s College, Cambridge.

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Elena joined UKGI in October 2020.  Prior to that, she had a twenty five year career in investment banking at Citibank, Goldman Sachs and Ondra Partners advising companies across Europe on financial strategy, capital raising and capital allocation. Also through providing advice to senior management and boards she developed corporate governance expertise and became a non executive director on public company boards.  In addition to her role at UKGI, she presently is a Non Executive Director at illimity Bank, a digital only SME focused bank headquartered in Milan, Italy. She holds a degree in business administration from Bocconi University, Milan.

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Edward joined UK Government Investments in 2015, and has worked on both corporate finance and corporate governance projects. Most recently, Ed led the joint MOD/UKGI team that successfully brought the Atomic Weapons Establishment back into government ownership.

Prior to joining UKGI, Edward worked as a lawyer. He trained with the Scottish Government before moving into private practice first in Scotland and then the City, specializing in project and asset finance. Edward combined work and study to complete a Masters in global energy and climate policy, and further augmented his sectoral experience with secondments to Network Rail, ING and UK Export Finance.

Edward has completed a two year secondment with the Cabinet Office, where he first led on business, energy and environmental policy coordination in the Economic and Domestic Affairs Secretariat, working closely with HMT and No.10. Edward then led a team in DExEU preparing for the UK’s exit from the EU, before being asked to help establish and lead a team within the COVID Taskforce.

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Jonathan rejoined UKGI in January 2021 to lead its work supporting HMT’s financial interventions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, having previously been with the organisation between 2015 and 2019.

In his first stint at UKGI Jonathan led the inaugural income contingent student loan sale on behalf of DfE, UKGI’s work on net zero with BEIS, and projects with MoD, DIT, and the FCO.

Jonathan’s private sector background is in asset management. He was a portfolio manager at the BT Pension Scheme, running secure income and infrastructure equity portfolios, and at BlackRock, where he helped establish its infrastructure debt business. He began his career at ING Barings in its Energy, Transport, and Infrastructure group.

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Aidan joined UKGI in February 2021 to lead the insurance branch in the Contingent Liabilities Group. Aidan is on secondment from the Government Actuary’s Department. Aidan has over 20 years’ experience at GAD providing actuarial advice to the public sector, covering insurance, social security and pension arrangements. From 2015 to 2020 Aidan was GAD’s Head of Technical and Professional, responsible for technical and professional practices across the department.

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