Antony Dearden co-founded Jola in 2014 with Andrew Dickinson, Adrian Sunderland, Lee Broxson and Cherie Howlett. He was coaxed out of retirement by Andrew to start-up Jola, who had previously worked with him on his first start up in 1996. Antony took the decision last month to retire from all his work commitments, including his Jola position, to spend his golden years playing golf.
Antony is a chartered accountant. Having trained with Price Waterhouse, he became a partner in Spicer & Pegler in 1975 and continued in this role with successor firms Touche Ross and Deloitte in Nottingham for 26 years. During this time he spent two years on secondment to the international firm and then served as Managing Partner of Spicer & Pegler Nottingham from 1987 up to the merger with Touche Ross in 1990. As a lead client service partner, Antony acted for a wide variety of private company clients providing a range of services covering financial management, tax planning and ownership succession issues together with annual audit and corporate tax compliance.
Since 2001, Antony has acted as non-executive director or company secretary for a number of private companies providing advice on board recruitment, business funding, strategic planning, corporate governance and statutory compliance issues.
Andrew Dickinson, CEO, commented, ‘Antony has been an integral part of the team at Jola with his keen financial brain and has been a great sounding board and consigliere for me. Antony held the role of Chairman and Company Secretary at Jola. He ran board meetings with military precision, ensuring every voice was heard, ensuring efficient and successful decision making. He has supported us at every stage of our dramatic growth and he will be dearly missed. We wish him a very happy retirement.’
Martin Harriman takes over as Jola Chairman this month and Ronnie Smith, Jola’s CFO will take on the role as Company Secretary. Martin has worked as an executive for some of the largest companies in the telecoms sector, including Telefonica (where he was CEO of their UK digital business), O2 where he served on the board, Ericsson in Sweden and Lightsquared in New York. Ronnie is a well-known figure in the telecommunications sector having been CFO of Spiritel and co-founder/CFO of Six Degrees Group.