Board of Directors

Murray is a Chartered Accountant with over 35 years of audit and advisory experience gained with PricewaterhouseCoopers in the UK, where he held a variety of senior management, governance and client roles across a broad range of industry sectors. Murray joined the Board in February 2016 and became Non-Executive Chairman in April 2021. Previously, Murray was also a Non-Executive Director of Sutton and East Surrey Water Plc.

Mike Danson founded Datamonitor Plc, an online information company, in 1990. In 2000, Datamonitor completed its flotation on the London Stock Exchange and was sold to Informa Plc for £502m in 2007. GlobalData acquired the Datamonitor Financial, Datamonitor Consumer, MarketLine and Verdict businesses from Informa Plc in 2015.

Peter Harkness has more than 35 years’ experience as a Director or Chairman of several successful businesses, predominantly in the media sector.  In addition to leading a number of private equity deals, Peter has also spent more than 20 years as a Non-Executive Director of five quoted companies, including Walker Greenbank Plc and Chrysalis VCT Plc, and has twice been a Plc Chairman. Peter was a Non-Executive Director of Datamonitor until its sale to Informa Plc and was Chairman of the Butler Group until its sale to Datamonitor. Peter has also undertaken Board roles in the Third Sector. Peter’s experience and understanding of the media and information subscription sector is an excellent asset for the GlobalData Board, particularly how we sell and the selling process.

Graham joined the Group in 2011 and held senior finance positions before becoming Chief Financial Officer in January 2018. Since joining, the Group has grown significantly in scale and Graham has been involved in a number of corporate transactions, including; M&A, debt raising and corporate re-organisation. Graham started his career at PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he qualified as a Chartered Accountant and subsequently joined Datamonitor when it was part of Informa Plc.

Annette joined the Board in February 2017. Annette is also a Non-Executive Director of Leeds Building Society and Stratos Markets Ltd, in addition to conducting consulting / advisory work. Prior to moving into a portfolio career, Annette’s most recent Executive role was CEO of Lloyds Bank Private Banking Limited and Managing Director for Wealth & Mass Affluent for Lloyds Banking Group. Prior to that, Annette was Managing Director of Bank of Scotland (Retail). Annette has over 35 years of Financial Services experience, working for Lloyds Banking Group, Bank of America, MBNA Europe Bank Ltd and NWS Bank Ltd. Annette’s prior experience has given her an excellent understanding of Technology, product channels to meet customer needs, Operational Management and Risk.

Alongside his Non-Executive role at GlobalData, Andrew is the Operating CEO for a Sports Technology business, ai.io and holds a number of Non-Executive and advisory roles to a range of technology and data companies including VSN International and Data Leaders. Over the course of his career, Andrew has held a range of executive level roles including Group Chief Data Officer at Pepper Financial Services, Group Chief Data Officer for J Sainsbury Plc, Business Intelligence Director at News UK and General Manager of Business Intelligence at Telefonica. With over 30 years of experience in commercially orientated data and analytics, Andrew has a successful track record for implementing transformational data-driven change across a number of industry sectors.

Julien is a veteran technology executive with more than 20 years’ experience in Silicon Valley and Europe across multiple senior roles in major technology companies including Amazon.com, eBay, Skype, Facebook and Intuit. He joined Skype in 2007, where he built the team in charge of Strategy, Business Development and Corporate Development. Prior to joining Facebook, he founded a mobile messaging company called TextMe, which reached 40m users and is now a profitable and successful business. He joined Facebook in 2016 to lead Platform Partnerships for EMEA. Since 2022, he has been leading International Business Development and Strategy for Intuit. Julien holds a BA in Finance from ESCP Europe in Paris, as well as an MBA from UC Berkeley.

Catherine Birkett is Chief Financial Officer of GoCardless, a leading global account to account payments business. Joining in 2018 she has overseen a period when revenue has increased five times, lead three funding rounds, the last of which saw Gocardless reach unicorn status. Alongside finance, Catherine also leads legal, regulatory & compliance and business systems. Before joining GoCardless, Catherine was Chief Financial Officer for one of Europe’s fastest-growing telecoms providers, Interoute, where she took the business from $20m to $800m in turnover over 16 years, leading equity and debt raises, including an inaugural high yield debt issue. While there, she also completed 10 acquisitions, including one for a business half the size of Interoute, before overseeing a successful exit of the business in May 2018.