Neil Mendoza, Chairman
Neil joined the board of the business in 2010, with a background of 30 years in finance and publishing, creating, owning and selling businesses. Neil has been a client with the business since 2004..

Neil’s career includes JP Morgan in New York and London where he worked in the oil and gas sector. He then moved into business, working in the film industry firstly in film finance and then as a co-owner of Hammer Films which he subsequently sold. Neil was a founder of Forward, the custom marketing and publishing agency which was sold to WPP in 2001.

Neil is a director of the Soho Theatre and the Shakespeare Schools Festival and judges the Laurence Olivier awards. He is Chairman of The Landmark Trust and a founding trustee of the Forward Arts Foundation.

Neil has a MA in Geography from Oriel College, Oxford.

Phillip Russell, Chief Executive Officer
Phillip Russell is the co-founder of Victoria Private Investment Office with Inno van den Berg. As well as advising clients and managing portfolios, he is responsible for the day to day management of the firm.

Phillip has 25 years of experience in investment and risk management including specialist expertise in currencies. Phillip began his career at Lloyds Merchant Bank before moving to CIBC/Wood Gundy in Hong Kong & Tokyo, and then WestLB. During his time in Asia he advised some of the world’s largest companies and financial institutions on their investment portfolios and interest rate and currency risk management.

Phillip joined UBS on his return to the UK as a relationship manager advising entrepreneurs and larger complex accounts including the Scanlon family who were attracted by his approach and expertise. In 2003 the Scanlons set up Victoria Capital to manage their wealth and to offer other investors the investment strategy that had been devised by Phillip and Inno van den Berg . In 2004 Phillip joined Victoria Capital to promote this strategy and many of Phillip’s clients followed him. Other families and individuals including several business owners soon joined as clients, and following the MBO in 2008, Phillip and Inno van den Berg now own the business.

Phillip has a degree in languages and modern European studies from Liverpool University.

Inno van den Berg, Chief Investment Officer
Inno van den Berg is the co-founder of Victoria Private Investment Office with Phillip Russell.

As Chief Investment Officer he is responsible for investment strategy and manages individual client portfolios. He also specifically researches financial, utilities and telecom sectors.

Inno has over 20 years’ experience managing portfolios and sales and trading teams. He started his investment banking career with the newly formed euro convertibles team at SG Warburg in 1987. Having spent 6 years at SG Warburg working on the derivatives team he moved with the convertibles team firstly to Smith New Court and subsequently to HSBC James Capel. At HSBC Inno was responsible for establishing a convertibles team in New York before returning to London to become global head of convertible sales. Inno also took joint responsibility for the convertible trading book.

In 2001 Inno joined UBS Wealth Management as a director on their client advisory and trading team, where he first worked with Phillip Russell developing the investment strategy for the Scanlon family. He joined Victoria Capital with Phillip in 2004 where together they added other client portfolios to the business and then completed the successful MBO in 2008.

Heather Maizels, Managing Director
Heather joined Victoria Private Investment Office in September 2011 signifying its intentions to take its investment consultancy and investment services into the wider market.

Heather built the private banking business at Barclays from scratch, taking it into Barclays Wealth where she was a member of the Advisory Board. From the Advisory Board of Barclays Wealth she also championed family philanthropy; the wider investment needs of women; and Art as an asset class. She brings continuous experience of issues faced by individual, family and charitable clients.

Prior to Barclays Heather acquired institutional experience in UK merchant and US investment banks where she set up currency swaps and private placement businesses and led transactions for corporate, institutional and sovereign clients.

Heather is a barrister, with a MA in Law from Girton College, Cambridge University where she has instigated the Responsible Financial Wealth prize. She is a former trustee of the Institute for Philanthropy and a former trustee of the Oxford University Law Foundation. She has spoken frequently on family wealth issues, art wealth, philanthropy and responsible wealth.

Since 2007 he has been a columnist on investment for the Financial Times and a regular contributor to The Spectator. In 2008 he was a founding shareholder of Agrifirma Brazil, a specialist farmland development business (now renamed Genagro Ltd), for whom he works as investment director.

A historian, he holds degrees from Cambridge University and the Sloan School of Management at MIT, where he wrote a thesis on the investment philosophy of Warren Buffett. He has also served as an adviser to Oxford University’s Said Business School and is the author of three full-length books on investment, Money Makers, Investing With Anthony Bolton, and Templeton’s Way with Money. He is a non-executive director of Jupiter Primadona Growth Trust and Genagro Services Ltd.

Tom Helme, Portfolio Manager
Tom has over 10 years’ experience as an equity analyst. He specialises in pharmaceutical, consumer staples and capital goods sectors. He was previously an analyst with Investec covering European engineering, pharmaceuticals and consumer goods sectors. Prior to this he was an analyst with Baillie Gifford covering UK and Japanese pharmaceuticals and consumer goods sectors.

Tom has a BA in History from Bristol University.

David Russell, Portfolio Manager
David is responsible for managing portfolios of fixed and floating debt instruments. He has 22 years’ experience managing trading portfolios with leading investment banks. Previously he was responsible for managing bank-capital and insurance debt products at Nomura International. Before this he held trading positions at CSFB, Dresdner Kleinwort Benson and Baring Bros.

David has a BA in Languages from Liverpool University.