Ridgecrest PLC

Mr Holt qualified as a chartered accountant with Deloitte Haskins and Sells (“DH&S”) in Manchester in 1986. Having spent 10 years at DH&S and 18 months working for DH&S in Atlanta, USA, Mr Holt left DH&S to work in industry. Mr Holt has 24 years’ experience in industry, initially working for large corporates such as ICL, and Micro Warehouse, a NASDAQ quoted company, but more recently in SME and start-up businesses which were both publicly and privately owned often with private equity backing. Mr Holt has held the position of Finance Director for several companies operating in the IT, direct mail, distribution, recruitment, and ship management sectors and has experience of financial management and growing companies in the UK, Europe and the US. He has extensive mergers and acquisitions experience in the UK, Europe and the US dealing with both the financial aspects of acquisitions and the post-merger integration of finance and operational functions.

In the last few years Mr Holt has acted as a part time FD/consultant for a number of small and growing businesses providing help and guidance to the owners of those businesses. He has held the position of non-board interim Chief Financial Officer of Ridgecrest since January 2020.

Robert has worked in the human capital sector for over 25 years and was most recently founder and Chief Executive Officer of The FISER Group Limited. Prior to this he was Chief Executive Officer of both Imprint PLC and Morgan Mckinley Limited. Robert is a graduate of Exeter University and Cranfield Business School.

Mr Normand qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 1978, having trained with Spicer and Pegler (now part of Deloitte). Following a secondment to 3i plc, Mr Normand specialised for the next 15 years in the provision of advice to management buy-out and buy-in teams and on private company acquisitions, disposals and capital raisings. Since 2002 Mr Normand has fulfilled management and finance officer roles for a number of different commercial and charitable organisations, mostly on a part-time basis. From 2009 to 2016, he was the full-time finance director of Pathfinder Minerals Plc, an AIM-listed mining exploration company.

He is currently non-executive chairman of All Active Asset Capital Limited and an executive director of Vela Technologies plc, both of which are AIM-quoted investing companies, Mr Normand is also non-executive chairman of Global Resources Investment Trust plc, which is premium-listed on the London Stock Exchange.