Who We Are
We are a team of enthusiastic, experienced and adaptable business consultants.
We offer solutions for the ever changing needs for our clients. Our impartial, objective advice and support continues to deliver genuine business benefits for our clients year on year.
John Fairley, Partner
07786 013035
John, with a partner founded and built two companies from scratch, which grew to become a multi million pound turnover business, employing 53 people. The businesses included a leisure consultancy that designed and developed health farms and spas worldwide, including a spa on the QE2. The other company produced exclusive skin care products sold at top department stores and spas. Recognized as a market trend leader, it achieved brand penetrations at the same levels as Clarins and Decleor and supplied British Airways First Class with skin care products. John sold his interests in both companies in 1998.
John had a very successful military career spanning service with the Royal Horse Artillery, Special Forces and the Ministry of Defence Intelligence Staffs - briefing up to ministerial level, including the Prime Minister. He also had two years as a Training and Development Instructor at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.
As an enthusiastic sailor he completed the 2000/2001 Global Challenge yacht race, circumnavigating the world against the wind. He also uses his sailing activities to allow JFP to support Help for Heroes. He competed in a transatlantic yacht race raising £12,000 and competed in the famous Sydney to Hobart Yacht race raising another £11,000 in the process.
John founded JFP in 2001. He recognised from his previous business experience when attempting to buy The Champney's Group from Guinness, using one of the Big Four Accountancy Firms, how expensive and time consuming planning and implementation was. He realised that most SME's needed a more cost effective and time effective process. That is what JFP now offers.
John has worked with many business in the non exec role. In addition to the normal functions he has helped clients through the Business Sale process including acquisitions, MBOs etc. He pulls together the requisite teams and assists the client throughout the process.
Catriona Watt-Smith, Partner
07943 333520
Catriona has spent the last 15 years working in senior management at some of the most respected food brands in Britain. She played a pivotal role growing these organisations into multi-million-pound companies – including Bread Holdings (GAIL’s Bakery, The Bread Factory, The Bertinet Bakery) and Mathiesons Bakeries. Catriona enjoys working with businesses to help create a strategic plan and champion a vision, with a passion for leading, coaching and motivating large teams to enable others to succeed and grow. Catriona is also interested in pushing equality and working with women to ensure they are equipped to be the best they can be, through empowerment, learning and supporting each other.
Norman (Norrie) Jackson, Partner
07710 348197
Norrie’s schoolboy ambition was to play rugby for Scotland or become a professional cricketer. But after three years at Edinburgh University, he realised he would not make the grade - and decided to focus on the thrills and excitement of being a Chartered Accountant. This he did, qualifying with Ernst & Young in London. His first step into commerce was as the Finance Director of a Scottish & Newcastle Breweries’ subsidiary, which was building a golf course in the South of France.
He then worked for Exxon Mobil for seven years, working in fifteen different countries including New York, West Africa, Paris, Turkey, Indonesia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Australia and New Zealand.
In his early thirties, he decided he was not a Big Company man and taking a years’ salary as a redundancy package, he set up on his own in Richmond, Surrey, acting as a Business Adviser, Mentor, Non-Executive Director, Chairman and Corporate Financier,buying and selling companies and raising investors monies. And this is what he has been doing for the last thirty years, working with over 1,000 companies in the process.
Apart from being a JFP Partner, Norrie has been on the Board of the rugby club, London Scottish for the last 14 years helping to raise over £7 million from over 160 investors to pay for better players and coaches.
He is also an Adviser to the Scottish Business Network, an Ambassador of The Victoria Foundation, a Richmond based medical charity, and member of the Professional Speaking Association.
Peter Tory, Partner
07908 204057
Peter Tory qualified as a Chartered Accountant with a City firm in 1974. He then moved to Calgary, Canada and joined the oil industry, working in both the upstream and downstream sectors. In 1981, he was transferred to London to head up the finance, legal and corporate development functions of a quoted British exploration and production company an interest in which had been acquired by his Canadian employers.
Over a ten-year period he implemented the framework to enable the company to become a successful North Sea operator, arranging over $60 million in limited recourse bank finance and co-ordinating two rights issues. Following successful sale of the oil company, he has spent the last 20 years as an entrepreneur, working through several economic cycles, and has taken businesses from concept to creation, through development to sale.
He has arranged over £30 million of bank finance, raised £10 million of equity from both private and venture capital sources and created over 200 jobs.