Steve Burrows
Director & Principal Consultant

Steve started his working life operating on both sides of the recording and broadcasting industry, with a position abroad as a radio studio engineer for BFBS, and another role ensuring that foreign intelligence agencies were prevented from recording or broadcasting the sensitive goings on within a British military intelligence establishment. On returning to the UK a downturn in the recording and broadcasting industry suggested that a change of career was in order, and Steve enrolled in training to convert his analogue audio electronic engineering skills into digital electronics for microprocessor systems.

Six months after successfully landing his first job in the computing industry developing new technology with a well respected technology firm in Cambridge Steve was poached. Headhunted by the UK's leading Microprocessor Application Consultancy he found that consultancy suited him, the satisfaction of achieving a win for a client was addictive, and set him firmly on a career path of solving other people's problems by creating new products and re-engineering business processes to take advantage of emerging microprocessor-based technologies. 

An early brush with cancer caused Steve to re-evaluate his priorities and in 1984 he set up his own consultancy business, acquiring long-term engagements with US corporates ITT and Xerox alongside assignments for smaller UK and European businesses. As microprocessor technology revolutionised business operations and management through the 80's and 90's Steve's work came to be dominated by business change, sometimes employing technology but often not. At the end of the 90's Steve joined the board of a UK company which he had assisted through a difficult period of change, and as a director led the business through enormous growth during the following decade, returning to consulting in 2009. 

Steve has two decades of consulting experience into private and public sectors and a decade as an executive director of a major UK company. He has led major programmes and projects in business process improvement, customer communication, technology development and implementation, culture change and regulatory compliance. He has managed projects with budgets of over £100 million and encompassing over 4,000 personnel. He is also co-Chair of the Membership Board of the Chartered Institute for IT, serving over 70,000 institute members.

Steve is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Fellow of the Institute of Directors, a Chartered Director, a Fellow of BCS The Chartered Institute for IT, and a Chartered IT Professional. He is also qualified as both a project manager using PRINCE and an experienced programme manager employing the Xerox PDP methodology. 

James Green
Director & Principal Consultant

Whilst still at school James entered the world of commerce by setting up a number of business enterprises with friends all of which were based on the premise that businesses don’t sell products or services – they provide solutions for their clients, and that whatever the product or service the secret of success lies in marketing those solutions. This is a belief that has driven James’s business career ever since and which he has applied to his own businesses and those of his clients.

After his career as a teenage entrepreneur – which paid for an MG sports car (after a short lived affair with a Bentley he has since traded up to Jaguars) and which enabled him to indulge his love of literature by studying it at university in Portugal – he qualified as a tax accountant. James is of the opinion that tax planning is about interpreting law and is therefore about “language rather than sums”. James says “I was told that the best route to the boardroom was to get an accounting qualification, but I don’t like doing sums. They’re too easy and boring. However I do like an argument - so taxation was the obvious choice for me.”

Since then James has been an offshore trust administrator, broadcaster, book publisher (with offices in the UK, Ireland, Canada and the USA), and he has written, edited or translated over 60 books on subjects ranging from tax treaties, to marketing, management, politics, poetry and biography. Having sold his publishing business “to Americans with more money than sense” he went on in the late 1980’s to establish an international fiduciary and corporate service business with offices in London, Geneva and the Isle of Man.

James is a non-executive director of several listed and unlisted companies and, although his experience is clearly very much broader, he is widely known and respected as an advisor to UK and international clients on structuring or restructuring their businesses in the most tax efficient manner, and in dealing with issues such as financing, transfer pricing, VAT, and profit repatriation.

Despite being a very outspoken Euro-sceptic, for nine years James was a member of the European Union Objective 2 and Objective 3 Programme Monitoring Committees, overseeing multi-billion Euro budgets relating to infrastructure, regeneration, training and education projects. These committees not only held program providers to account but acted as scrutiny committees holding the EU Commission and EU Parliament to account.

As opposition group leader of a major UK local authority James served as an executive member of the West Midlands Strategic Planning Authority and the Local Government Association Regeneration Executive. For seven years he was a member of the Inland Revenue Tribunal Service. 

James achieved Chartered Director status six years ago. He is also a Fellow of the Institute of Directors, a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management, a Member of the International Tax Planning Association, a member of the International Fiscal Association, and an Associate of the Institute of Financial Accountants. James has a Bachelor’s degree in European Literature, a joint Doctorate in Literature and Philosophy, and a postgraduate Certificate in Marketing from Cornell University Business School.

John Sheath
Director & Principal Consultant

John’s family history goes back to the 14th century on the Isle of Man and he moved here with his family in 1974.  First qualifying as an accountant, his career has included audit & accountancy, manufacturing industry (actually using letters of credit, bills of exchange and bills of lading), banking, insurance, funds, fiduciary services, providing consultancy to a myriad of Government and Private Sector clients, running one of the largest international deposit taking institutions and acting as an independent non executive director to several listed and unlisted companies and funds.  Most recently he has also worked closely with the Institute of Directors to enhance and develop awareness of the Chartered Director programme, connecting the IOD to organisations including the British Banking Association and is a Chartered Director Ambassador.

He is a highly experienced consultant and director (both in an executive and non executive capacity). John’s career has combined both, including  leadership roles in several prominent Isle of Man businesses culminating as Managing Director of Bradford & Bingley International, where he led the business from £2m to £3.1bn over a 6 year period.  During this time John launched an internet channel, created a strategic alliance with IOM Post to use their branches, obtained a Hong Kong Banking Licence and all on the same headcount.  John has worked with the Isle of Man Government on complex matters including the implementation of Zero-Ten Tax Strategy, led the IOM Banking Deposit Sector response to the EU Savings Tax Directive and worked closely with the IOM Government Treasury Banking Committee.  He was a founding member of the IOM Government Treasury Finance Steering Committee, a council member of the Institute of Directors IOM Branch and a committee member of the IOM Banking Association.

John’s core skills lie in assessing where a business can be improved, breaking it down and rebuilding it into a superior model, whilst consistently improving business performance and risk management, together with enhancing corporate governance.  His consultancy practice has seen him deliver such solutions to clients in the Isle of Man, including the IOM Government, Canada, South Africa and in London.  His wide commercial exposure, international outlook and deep business acumen allows him to take hold of a subject and turn it into a learning opportunity, bringing greater benefits and improvements to the business.

Not content with life on earth, John is also Company Secretary of the International Institute of Space Commerce, based on the Isle of Man.  However his head is definitely not in the clouds - this is a new industry that is only going to grow and like many others that at the time seemed alien and way out there - space is one that already impacts our lives and businesses in ways we do not realise.

John was elected a Chartered Director in April 2010, and is a Fellow of the Institute of Directors, a Fellow of the Institute of Financial Accountants and a Fellow of the Association of International Accountants.  Some say he is a jolly good Fellow.