The Team
Our mission is to help Chairmen improve the effectiveness of their boards of directors. Principally we offer our bespoke, rigorous and independent service to review boards, their committees and individual directors' contributions.
Contact Tom Bonham Carter
Tom Bonham Carter
Tom has been working with Boards to help them improve their effectiveness since 2005. He founded The Effective Board LLP (TEB) in November 2017 to continue the services offered by Armstrong Bonham Carter which Tom co-founded in 2006 with Martin Armstrong.
Tom has conducted a substantial number of board reviews for FTSE 100, FTSE 250, FTSE Smaller Companies and private companies across a wide range of sectors. He has also advised some charities on governance issues.
Beyond his board advisory work, Tom has extensive experience of leading successful businesses in the highly regulated investment management industry for Barclays and BZW both in the UK and internationally. Prior to being a manager of investment management businesses, he was a fund manager investing in UK and Far Eastern equities. As an investment manager, one of the key areas in which Tom focused was the effectiveness of senior management and their Boards in the development and implementation of corporate strategy and in turn how those strategies met the interests of institutional investors’ needs.
From 1998 to 2004, Tom ran the discretionary fund management business of Barclays Stockbrokers. Whilst there he helped create one of the UK’s most profitable private client fund managers. Prior to that, he was Chief Executive of Barclays Global Investors in Hong Kong, which was then one of the largest and leading institutional investment managers in the region. He had earlier moved to Asia in 1994 when he managed one of the first six mutual fund companies to be set up in Thailand. In the late 1980s, Tom managed the smaller companies’ team for BZW Investment Management, which was at that time one of the largest institutional smaller company team in the City.
Before his career in investment management, Tom Bonham Carter attended the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and served with the Irish Guards, mainly in Germany. He holds an MA in Economics from Magdalene College, Cambridge.
Tom is a trustee of the Nightingale Fund which provides financial support for course fees to nurses, midwives and community public health nurses who are registered with the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC).
Contact Sarah Saunders
Sarah Saunders
Sarah has been working in corporate governance since 2013. She has a particular focus on managing The Effective Board’s bespoke online questionnaire-based board evaluation process and research. She has worked with the boards of numerous listed companies and privately owned business companies as well as not for profit organisations.
With her additional experience as an executive search consultant and researcher, she understands how people work together, both in the boardroom and beyond.
Before joining Tom at Armstrong Bonham Carter, Sarah spent thirteen years with executive search firm Armstrong International and Armstrong Management Group, a C-level search and advisory business. Over that time, Sarah worked on a wide variety C-level executive and non-executive searches for corporates, family offices, foundations, endowments and founder-owned businesses in both the UK and Europe. In addition to search work, Sarah also led a number of pre-investment management due diligence assignments for asset management and private equity clients.
Sarah joined Armstrong International from Fox Linton Associates in 2000. She graduated from University of Hull with a BSc (Hons) in French.
Contact Philip Hudson
Philip Hudson
Consultant and adviser to The Effective Board
Philip is a lawyer and experienced senior executive who has been involved in a very broad range of corporate issues and implementation of strategic change across a diverse group of businesses. He has been General Counsel and Group Secretary of three FTSE listed companies over a period of seventeen years and has a deep knowledge of corporate governance, regulation, compliance and risk management.
After qualifying and working for five years in a law firm, most of Philip’s career has been in the power and water sectors. He was one of the founding members of the in-house legal team at Powergen plc at the time of privatisation of the electricity industry. He was then part of the leadership teams that took an engineering business and a wholesale and distribution business through strategic transformations. He was General Counsel and Group Secretary of Kelda Group, the owner of Yorkshire Water, and subsequently held the same role at Drax Group, the electricity generation and supply business, where he was also Director of Corporate Affairs.
Philip is Chairman of Trustees the Drax Group of the Electricity Supply Pension Scheme and a director of Electricity Pensions Limited and Electricity Pensions Trustees Limited. He is a non-executive director of Barnsley NHS Foundation Trust, and an independent trustee of the Baxi Partnership Employee Benefit Trust.
Philip has a law degree from Newcastle University, is qualified as a solicitor, and holds the Pension Management Institute Award in Pension Trusteeship.
Contact Greg McMahon
Greg McMahon
Greg McMahon is a solicitor and an experienced company secretary and general counsel. He has been a senior management board member of listed companies for over 20 years and has experience of organisations at various stages: the height of success, in crisis and in steady state and calm waters. He has introduced and implemented best practice governance systems whilst doing so sympathetically to, and cognisant of, both the philosophies of the organisations themselves and the expectations of the external bodies who monitor such matters.
He joined Mitchells & Butlers plc, the listed hospitality group, in 2013 as Group Company Secretary and General Counsel. He implemented a full set of governance arrangements including the establishment of Board committees and terms of reference for the Board and all of its committees. He was chair of the Group Risk Committee and had Board reporting responsibility for the Internal Audit, Risk and Insurance, Safety, Security and Health & Safety teams. He was a member of the Group’s Executive Committee and its Portfolio Development Committee. Greg retired from Mitchells & Butlers in September 2022. His previous position was at Wm Morrison Supermarkets plc (2009 to 2013), as its first Head of Legal and its Group Company Secretary. He was a member of the Group Management Board and its Corporate Responsibility Committee. In this role he introduced a full suite of corporate governance and compliance policies. Prior to that, Greg was Company Secretary of Assura Group Limited, (registered in Guernsey) and was a member of its Executive Committee.
He joined the leisure travel business, Airtours plc, in 1998 as Group Company Secretary and Head of Legal Services and was part of its senior management team through its rapid expansion, transition to MyTravel Group plc, its subsequent near collapse (as the world, and the travel industry, responded to the events of 11 September 2011), the company’s renaissance and subsequent £3bn merger with Thomas Cook AG to create Thomas Cook Group plc. He was a member of the Group Management Board of Thomas Cook until he left at the end of 2007.
Prior to deciding to move into in-house roles as company secretary and general counsel/head of legal services, Greg worked for eleven years in private practice, focussing on corporate and commercial work, with two large UK or international firms (Addleshaw, Sons & Latham and Garrett & Co).
He has held many Board directorships both in an executive and non-executive capacity in the UK, Ireland (including an insurance company regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland) and various European, US and Australian companies.
Greg is a trustee of Life for a Life Memorial Forests charitable trust and holds the Pensions Management Institute award in Pensions Trusteeship. He also carries out a small amount of ad hoc legal and governance advisory work.
Greg joined The Effective Board team as a consultant in July 2023