The Boardroom Path

[00:00:03] Ralph Grayson: Welcome to The Boardroom Path by Sainty Hird & Partners. I'm your host, Ralph Grayson, a partner in the board practice. In this series, we'll offer practical steps and useful perspectives for aspiring and newly appointed NEDs. Throughout its 30 year history, Sainty Hird has recruited senior board members across the City, Industry, the Public Sector and NGOs.

We're now also evaluating those boards, as well as coaching and mentoring those seeking to transition from an executive career into the boardroom. So we'll be speaking to some leading figures in the board advisory and NED world. Specifically, we'll seek their counsel about how and where to spend time and energy to make an effective transition into the boardroom. The goal is to equip recent and aspiring NEDs with tips, tactics and strategies to be most effective and build a successful career as a board director. In the process, we AIM to help you to think more about who you are, how you operate and how you can make this work in the boardroom. I'm delighted to introduce today's guest, James Ashton, who is Chief Executive of the Quoted Companies Alliance or QCA. James is at the forefront of championing the interests of small and mid-sized quoted companies in the UK, working tirelessly to improve policy, regulation, and overall business conditions for these vital drivers of economic growth. James brings a rich perspective from his experience both in financial journalism and in leadership.

Most recently, he's been pioneering initiatives to support boardroom excellence, such as the brand new QCA Director Growth Programme AIMs squarely at developing the next generation of boardroom talent and boosting investor confidence.

We'll be diving into that, discussing current trends for quoted companies, and perhaps even touching on the IPO jungle drums, sounding in city circles this autumn, and finding out what's coming up for the QCA and the companies and boards it serves. So James, welcome to the show and great to have you here.

[00:02:18] James Ashton: Ralph, it's great to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

[00:02:21] Ralph Grayson: So perhaps we just start with a bit more on your background and professional experience touching on journalism and being a podcast host.

[00:02:29] James Ashton: Yeah, absolutely. So I'm coming on for three years now at the QCA, which is a great place to be and my career going back over many years has always been financial journalism. So Daily mail, Sunday Times, Evening Standard, you know a period of self-employment, some books, a podcast and so on, and hopefully using some of that experience around telling stories for the QCA members.

[00:02:51] Ralph Grayson: What did the QCA see in you when they invited you to join, and how did that background and experience fit with mission and purpose?

[00:02:59] James Ashton: Isn't that when a CEO always says, you must ask the board about that? The QCA had very stable leadership, great leadership in Tim Ward and what I found and what I said to them was there are so many great aspects of the QCA. How do we just turn up the volume a little bit? How do we tell the story of what we do as an organization, what happens under the bonnet? But also, all of the great stories about what our companies are doing based all over the UK. Why these are the ones to back, why regulators and government need to get behind them. So the board obviously went for that, and here we are.

[00:03:35] Ralph Grayson: So let's just look under the bonnet then.

So the QCA is there to achieve what and what excited you about joining it?

[00:03:42] James Ashton: I liked that when I did my research the great respect and connectivity the organization had. I talk about a big five if you like, and there are other stakeholders. But we need to be close with the FRC, the FCA, Treasury, the Business Department, and the Stock Exchange.

You can and should add others to that. You know, we have great relations with the Takeover Panel, Aquis, and other government departments, DSIT and others as well. So I like that there was the connectivity. I love the issue this really played to what does the UK stand for? What are we good at? How do we back our own? How do weget growth into different regions of the UK? And these are issues I'd long written on and of course, there's the governance angle as the advice and guidance that the QCA offers, as well.

It felt like a great time to have a go at that.

[00:04:33] Ralph Grayson: And so if I'm a board member listening to this podcast on AIM, Aquis,or the main market, why should I be thinking about joining the QCA?

[00:04:44] James Ashton: Well, so what do we do? I mean we unashamedly campaign on behalf of public equity. There's lots of other organizations that cover aspects of what we do. But we have a real belief in that, and we particularly champion, as you say, the mid cap and the small cap companies. Our members have market caps of 1 million to 1 billion plus.

We've taken on some of the smallest members we've ever had in the last six months, but we've also got more members than we've ever had in the FTSE 250. So what do we offer? We want them to be able to fulfill their potential and we're obviously very market focused so that's about being able to attract the investors they need to thrive, to grow, to invest, to hire, to be kind of covered by the right amount of disclosure and regulation. There has to be a balance here. And I know a lot of companies think about the cost benefit analysis. But also we're there to help that narrative. Public companies are great because it's like the tiebreaker question.

So we hope directors and companies will join us because they support the mission. It's been a very hard time for public companies over a number of years. There's been lots of reform and we hope there's more still to come to support these companies. So it's about supporting the mission. It's about having their voice amplified. We think the companies that we're dealing with, they've got better things to do than knocking on the door of Treasury or the Business Department, and we can do that for them, and with them we can amplify their voice.

Then there's also, I think for the individual directors, it's very important to talk about our network. So often, we, the QCA, don't have the answer, and so often the directors don't want an answer from us. They want to come to our events, have a dinner, hear from a speaker, but also meet their own kind. Meet people who are in similar positions to theirs. We might have a dinner with a blue chip finance director, but actually all the FDs in the room want to have a chat about and compare notes on their auditor or some particular issue that they've got.

So we think we can offer that. We think we offer great value and there's a lot of discounted products like the publications and the training that we do and then also I think we're a great platform from an advisor point of view to help their business development. Sorry, that's the full pitch you've got there.

[00:06:55] Ralph Grayson: So the eco-system is probably broader and deeper than most people might imagine. So it's policy makers, it's investors,it's professional services advisors.

[00:07:06] James Ashton: Yeah, a third of our membership are not the companies. They are the advisors and investors. It's the full support network that gets behind the company. So, nomads, brokers, lawyers, accountants, and in the last year or so, we've really been eager to cultivate the investors. I think some investors felt that on our particular issues they weren't being heard through some of the larger trade bodies.

We set up an investor working group. We are very pleased to welcome Business Growth Fund, Lion Trust, Octopus. I mean, these are brands you would think would be behind us, and they have supported our work, but we brought them in and for things like campaigning on ISA, on stamp duty, on some of the high profile issues.

It's been a great resource and we've been really pleased to work with them.

[00:07:49] Ralph Grayson: What role do board members play in that? Do they get directly involved in helping you think about stakeholders and engagements and how might you approach a board differently to a founder or a CEO?

[00:08:03] James Ashton: There's a few things and I'll come onto the governance side in terms of the policy side and the research, I think every story we tell is best told through the perspective of a company. It's so much more credible with politicians, with regulators and so on. I think the advisors absolutely have great expertise and we have an array of expert groups through which we are dealing with a number of technical aspects, the policy submissions things like the recent AIM discussion paper and so on.

But if I think about what are we going to say to government as we head towards the next budget? I know that how things play on the frontline it really matters. So to take something quite abstract that might be a tax change or something about liquidity or company valuations and so on. We need to translate that into what a CFO will tell us, "We wanted to raise 7 million pounds when we went to market, we could only raise five, because of the valuation, because of the shortage of institutions or whatever." So then I want to know, what was it you didn't do with the 2 million you didn't get? Can we talk to government and say, look, there's a factory here that wasn't built. There's 20 people that weren't hired. There was,export into a new market that didn't happen.

I suppose the first point is those directors and that that lived experience, how does this play at the coalface, is really important. We've worked hard to bring the politicians much close to those companies. We've written to, in the last year, written to every MP where we have a company in their constituency and we've done what we call MP site visits. So getting MPs into actual companies in their constituencies down the road in Aberdeen, Cambridgeshire, Basingstoke, and really giving them a sense about what it is to be a growth company, a small or mid cap today, which is great. On the governance side, I think sometimes people are coming to us looking for answers to how best to behave and so on. We try to use the experience of the more seasoned board directors to feed the guidance that we offer to newer, younger directors.

[00:10:11] Ralph Grayson: Okay, so any board members listening can think of the QCA as a fulcrum in which they can be actively involved and play a role.

[00:10:17] James Ashton: Yeah, I think absolutely, and I think there's also it's worth checking. People say, sometimes say, I don't know if I'm a member. I would say if you don't know, the chances are you're not. If you follow the QCA code, which we would encourage you to buy a copy from us, that does not make you a QCA member.

There's a huge difference between mentioning the code in your annual report and actually joining our activities, our lobbying, our events and so on. Please join us.

[00:10:42] Ralph Grayson: And who's likely to know the answer, is that the CFO, CEO, or the company secretary? What's the point of contact for most people?

[00:10:48] James Ashton: Who is the point of contact. And actually, we have a range of points of contact in terms of who a primary contact might be in any organization. Quite often it's the CoSec, it can be the CFO, it can sometimes be the Chair, or aNED and it might be a NED that's known us before as well.

It's a question about who sometimes brings that relationship into the boardroom. I mean, if they're not sure, there's a member's directory on our website orthey can ask me.

[00:11:13] Ralph Grayson: You've sat on a couple of boards in the past or still do. What your experience with the boardroom?

[00:11:17] James Ashton: Well, I suppose my first experience of the boardroom was trying to imagine what happens in one, because I did spend a lot of time, writing about boardrooms. I'm sure I used the expression boardroom bust upon more than one occasion. In the period when I was self-employed, I really wanted to try and add some non-exec experience. It felt to me like another form of project. Another strand of work, another plate to spin. And so I was really keen to add that to my experience and so I'm now five years in on the board of an investment trust, Finsbury Growth and Income, and our portfolio manager, very well known chap Nick Train.

That's a great board to be on, we're in the FTSE 250 and the experiences I have there are directly relevant to QCA. So it's almost like I've planned my career.

[00:12:00] Ralph Grayson: Just thinking about that. So an investment trust is it a very distinct part of the ecosystem? There's always a lot talked about in terms of the label, NED, and is that still the right label to give people. And I know the IOD, part of theirCadbury 2.0 is looking at what and whether INED is still the right title. But just any perspectives from your side as to the different role a board member plays, whether they're on an investment trust, as opposed to a PLC,or a regulatory advisory board?

[00:12:34] James Ashton: Well obviously you're right. An investment trust is very different to a PLC board and I've only been on the former. I think this is going to sound like such a cop out. I think pretty much as soon as you sit down, you don't think about the label.

Maybe it's slightly different in an advisory board when you're satkind of another step away from a PLC board or a set of trustees or something. But I think you are all there for the same thing, constructive challenge and support.

[00:12:58] Ralph Grayson: Behavior can be very different though in terms of what your role on that board might be.

[00:13:03] James Ashton: I mean, in terms of the investment trust, I mean, we havethe AFIM Secretarial Administrative company, Frostrow and,you might say, they fulfill the sort of CoSec Chief Executive type role and then you havethe second key relationship is the portfolio manager. So, I think it doesn't feel that different.

[00:13:22] Ralph Grayson: No, I get that.

Before we leave the QCA in terms of its breadth, so we touched on the code, I think you do a number of committee guides as well, rem, risk, that's part of the remit and part of the education?

[00:13:34] James Ashton: Yeah, so what are we trying to do on that side? I mean, the QCA corporate governance code is 12 years old now. We've always published smaller company guidance based on the governance code that goes back I think 30 years. We had a conscious uncoupling as Gwynneth Paltrow would call it in about 2013.

So as 2023 we published the third iterationof our guide.Which is flexible pro-growth about maintaining a dynamic management framework and building trust. Companies on AIM have a choice of which code they can follow. It's got to be recognized code. We're really pleased that at the last count 93% of AIM companies chose to follow our code. So, we sell that. It's included in the membership package. We sell it to non-members. We also provide guidance to members and those that buy it. We have published for a while a suite of publications around the code and the three that we put out just before the summer break were guides for audit committee, remco, and for the first time the nominations committee. Now, we don't say that every company should have a nominations committee. But for those that choose to have one we hope this is a helpful guide. So that's what we've put out recently and then obviously we've pushed more into the training as well in the last few months.

[00:14:47] Ralph Grayson: Let's just focus in on what the key differences are betweenthe two different guides and what a board member should be thinking about, not just now, but into the future as to how your code might evolve.

[00:14:58] James Ashton: Well, I mean, we refreshed in 2023 and we said at the time that we would always reserve the right to look at it again. But, I think many of the people that were involved in that refresh would be quite relieved to hear that we might not be looking at it for several years, hence. It'll be too soon to say if and when that's changing in another direction.

We hope that the great strength of our code comes from its flexibility and we do sometimes get questions saying, what should we do in this situation or that situation and I think we have to work very hard not to be prescriptive. We don't think we will get thanks for being prescriptive, and I know that can be frustrating sometimes.

But I think the great strength of the document over the last 10 years is one of the first things I did coming in was try to review its effectiveness. What has it changed, what's its value and so on. Before there was our code, sometimes I think some of these conversations were quite difficult. We know that a lot of growth companies have a founder who's got a big shareholding: they could be Chair, they could be CEO. Investors know what they get when they're back a founder. They get someone very, very driven with a very clear vision, and I think the point at which they've gone public, sometimes they could be growing pains and we hope, and we believe, that by having the QCA code, you can almost drop it onto the boardroom table and we think it has helped along the conversation between those originators of the company and the people who've come in to do that constructive challenge and support.

[00:16:38] Ralph Grayson: So that segues us in nicely into the QCA Director Growth Programme. You and I have talked in the past about the lack of formal certification or qualification of any NED and the good, bad and indifferent around that. So let's not particularly go there. But what is particular or peculiar, do you think, to a growth company board member and how can training and development and the Programme address that?

[00:17:04] James Ashton: We've done publications, we've done guidance and help and we've always donesorts of training and we've had in the past and still do have a number of very successful modules that we do with the Non-Exec Directors Association, who we've been friends with for a long time.

I suppose what I wanted to do is we needed something that really encapsulated what any director could need in a toolkit for success in the boardroom. We wanted something that was wholly ours, that really had a name on the tin and it could go not just across one committee, but across a whole range of things. Covering things like legal responsibilities,the characteristics of efficient boards, and appropriate, personal behaviors. So this is for exec, non-exec young and old but we hope it comes to be something thatcompanies see as, very valuable for their board members to go on.

This is for AIM, Main Aquis could even be Pisces companies whenthey get going and I think it's somewhere, as you say, where directors can go and get a really thought through overview of what they need and what in particular for these companies. I keep coming back to this word, adaptability. I know from speaking to the companies quite often you've got one person handling effectively more than one role. You know, the CoSec, the Head of Investor Relations, the CFO, the COO, a lot of this gets boiled down, I think in smaller companies. They haven't yet got the sufficient senior figures to do each of these roles individually and I think that also extends to the NEDs and I think this is part of the attraction. If you are on the board of a FTSE 100 company you pretty much areflying over at 35,000 feet. You can look at the real top down stuff. You can only imagine what's happening all the way down at ground level.

I think the real difference for a small company board is you are going to know precisely what's going on. You're going to be pulled into it. You're going to have your sleeves rolled up. If this board hasn't got a marketing director and you have a a sense of marketing experience, then you're going to be co-opted to do all sorts of stuff. And I know we talk about what the appeal of growth companies are to some. I think that's part of it, is actually being really involved with a founder with a young company and so on.

So we hope that adaptability and the flexibility is something that the course covers off. We've got good attendance already. We're very pleased to be hosting that at the Stock Exchange. Watch this space.

[00:19:26] Ralph Grayson: And content delivered by Murray Steele, who's been a previous, interviewee

[00:19:31] James Ashton: We only wanted Murray, of course, and as your listeners will know great expertise. He's tailored something to our companies, to our markets. We've worked with him on pulling together some really thoughtful case studies and we have some panels with other board members to really take apart the life of the public company.

[00:19:49] Ralph Grayson: And just for the avoidance of doubt then, so a NED doesn't have to be a member of the QCA to go on this Programme or they do?

[00:19:55] James Ashton: No, not at all. I mean, there is a discount, there's a member discount for this Programme. But anyone can pay for this Programme and details on our website.

[00:20:03] Ralph Grayson: And an aspiring NED as well as an existing NED?

[00:20:06] James Ashton: Absolutely. It's interesting what we've got so far is some companies have looked at it and said, okay, this is for us. They're sending half their board. They're sending three people. There's one or two people who've signed up from the advisory side. Some of the team have said, well what's this lawyer doing coming along? And the answer is, we don't know. But we do think it's personal development, we suspect.

[00:20:27] Ralph Grayson: Well, anything that helps raise the bar for everybody in the industry, I think that's a great initiative. So well done you.Let's just bring things up to date then. S

o, where is the City today? What are the challenges for the boards in your ecosystem? How are government policy initiatives for growth affecting prospective IPOs? We've got a budget coming up, what's the mood out there?

[00:20:52] James Ashton: There's a number of people saying, we're going to see some real traction, some signs of life in 2026. I do know that there are things stacked up that could come off this autumn, 2025, and as I said in the paper recently, I don't think it would take much to light the IPO, touch paper. There is great geopolitical upheaval, of course, it seems like there always is.

But I think where the UK is versus even economies in Europe where there are difficulties. I mean, look, we have things like inflation ticking up. We have a budget that a number of people will be, would be, concerned about. But we also have quite a bit of stability. So, let's see.

[00:21:33] Ralph Grayson: From a policy perspective, the Listing Task Force, other initiatives particular and peculiar to raising public capital?

[00:21:43] James Ashton: I think that it has been the year of capital and I think the founders follow the money if they see that our markets, and that could be AIM, Aquis, Main market. If there is that liquidity, if there is that investor interest, then I think they will be more inclined to go there. That's always that kind of cost benefit analysis that companies think about. We know there will be heightened disclosure. However, if that helps us broaden the share registry and give us the funds to expand then we'll do it.

So we've had things that are working through the Mansion, House Accord. There's some positives in that driving DC pension money into AIM and Aquis stocks. But alongside a whole suite of other asset classes as well and then I think the Pensions Investment Bill and can be positive. That's more about investing in the UK. Again, I think in a lot of this equities have to roll their sleeves up and go into battle and say, actually you could invest in infrastructure, you could do this or that. But public equity, public companies offer great growth opportunities.

I think the positive thing, going back to the Mansion House speech in July is we don't often enough get a chancellor standing up and saying, let's buy shares, and by implication, let's buy British shares. So I think that's positive. We have to make that happen. I think changing the investment culture is a long-term project. I think an industry marketing campaign 40 years after Tell Sid bring it on. It's got to be multi-year. It's got to be clear. I think, the way to get private investors, retail investors, really excited about the stock market is to talk about the variety, the breadth you don't have to buy shares in BT or Glaxo. Half the companies that trade their shares in London have a market cap of less than a hundred million pounds. There's huge variety across sectors, across geographies, and we really want to make sure that this campaign emphasizes that there are companies down the road from you that you could buy shares in.

[00:23:42] Ralph Grayson: Any particular perspective on Pisces in terms of LSEG's initiative to create secondary liquidity in the primary market and Alasdair Haynes at Aquis has been very opinionated that all this does is detract from raising public equity. So it is not solving the core issue to the same extent. We've got Peel Hunt, now with RetailBook, I think it's called trying to increase retail participation in IPOs.

Any particular view either personally or from the QCA on this?

[00:24:12] James Ashton: It's difficult to say, We can't address that there is more, opportunities through the companies are floating later, private capital, all that sort of thing. I think this is a capital market innovation.

So I think, we as the QCA should applaud that. There's been plenty of times in history when we haven't been innovatingwhen the LSE of old hasn't been an innovator. So there is that. I think there's still a lot of work to doto make it stick. There are other platforms that private companies can go to for liquidity. You know, JP Jenkins has made strides in recent years as well. I think the key thing is that this is in a five year sandbox. We don't want it to detract from what it is to be public and I think by the way, it's incredibly important, that we have the challenger exchange in the form of Aquis and it's incredibly powerful that it's under new ownership, deep pockets, a lot of Swiss Francs to be spent on it. That's an investor that's betting big on real, and hidden value in UK small cap. So that's got to be positive.

But I think with all of these platforms, the key thing is defining what they offer and I think common consent AIM has been the one that's missed out here in terms of it's good that the LSE is turning some attention to it and we'll have some more of the feedback from that discussion paper. There are some regulatory solutions to AIM but we also think there are some marketing solutions. You have to, just like selling shares to retail investors, to private investors, you have to sell the merits of going public to a founder, to an entrepreneur. Too often people get starry-eyed about private capital, about, series C and that sort of thing. But actually the value of going public and even the value of, I mean, the intangible value of a public quote. So if I go back to one of the best IPOs there haven't been that many, but the big, one of the big hits this year, MHA, the accounting firm. Really pleased to have them as a QCA member. They put out their maiden interims a few weeks ago and they've done very well off the back of tariffs and that sort of thing. But actually, as they say in that statement, they've won business because of the visibility that they've got from having a public quote.

So it's just one of the things that companies should think about, and not every company wants profile. But actually I know many companies that have gone public they have that kite mark of a London listing. They go across the world, they're winning contracts. It's a positive and it's just something that needs kind of polishing up, I think from the storytelling point of view.

[00:26:47] Ralph Grayson: And if you were a board member sitting on the board of a company that's thinking about IPOing at the moment, and you may be thinking about going to the US or you're thinking about Nasdaq Alistair Haynes will be a guest on here shortly talking about how Aquis and Six will integrate with the Spanish bourse to create I think what they aspire to be, a pan-European growth exchange.

What should board members be thinking about in terms of geographical location, in terms of liquidity, and where else would you advise them to go and get good advice?

[00:27:17] James Ashton: What are the decisions? I suppose, look, there's what's been described as the London-New York decision. I think actually from where most of my members on the company side are is it public or is it private? That's the decision and the risk and reward associated with that and the sort ofliquidity, they would need. I think there are always other company directors they could talk to. You know, we have a whole range in the membership, whether people are having a tough time on any of their markets currently, or actually many who who see the virtue who've used the quoteand built their company with it. At our annual conference, a couple of months ago, we had Andrew Shaw from Gamma, who is now on the main market in the 250. But is absolutely a company that was built up over a decade by fundraising on AIM and I'm sure there are examples on Aquis and others.

[00:28:07] Ralph Grayson: What are the other themes? We've gone through a number of boardroom themes, be it diversity, be it ESG, more recently cyber, risk,and now AI. Any particular themes that you are hearing,that are worth airing?

[00:28:23] James Ashton: We've talked about ESG recently and clearly there's been pushback led by Trump 2.0. I suppose the challenge for a smaller company is that they are perhaps not going to be as eager or as confident to challenge either investors or their professional advisors on what they think they should be disclosing. So we have donesome events on that. We know that diversity can be a challenge for smaller companies. But also it pains to say that diversity touches on a range of things. It's not just gender. It's not just skin colour, it's not just professional background and so on.

I do think the one that comes up, we did a piece of work,it was just a handful of questions, almost like a pulse on non-exec trends and I think it's the same challenge with a different name if you like. It used to be sort of digital skills or cyber, and now it's AI. It's kind of the same thing in a different wrapper. It's that understanding of what comes next and I know that gets you into the debate about what are the skills that you should have around the boardroom and maybe what are the age of the people around the boardroom. But I think it is a challenge. I'm sure AI is high on all the risk registers.

And geoeconomics seems to be a new word. Well, I see. Yes, absolutely.

[00:29:40] Ralph Grayson: How many of your members are, this is probably a naive question, but tariffs? Trump? that affects many of the QCA members?

[00:29:49] James Ashton: You don't need to be a very old or a very big company to be trading abroad. So I think it very much is something that they would think about. I mean, we're trying to make much more emphasis around the regional spread that we offer.

You know, the fact that these companies are found to be more productive than companies on average, the fact that they're in all the major UK regions. But in terms of the international perspective. We have reinsurers that are based internationally. We have several mining members, so, one of our most plugged in members is a small miner, Rock Fire Resources. I think he's on the Gold Coast,the main mining operation is in Greece, and of course the quotes in London. So it's, quite a commute to the office. We do have that international perspective. And of course, we know people have done business through us and found new work through the contacts they've made at the QCA.

So even if we're not acting on all of those issues, we can ask the UK Government many things, but we can't ask them to solve the tariff problem.

[00:30:47] Ralph Grayson: There's a thought. So we touched on a few events. Let's just look forward on the calendar. What are the main calendar highlights of the QCA and what can we look forward to?

[00:30:56] James Ashton: We try and do a couple of big gathering points every year and then smaller events through that and I'm also mindful and very keen that we're doing more outside London and enough virtually as well.

We're a long way from it, but our annual conference takes place in June. That's the best part of 300 people. We need to get the big speakers there. So this year we had the City Minister, the Lord Mayor of London, the Chair of the British Business Bank, number two at the FCA, airing those issues and making sure that those organizations can use our platform but they're also listening to what members are saying.

We're really pleased to have added the QCA City debate to our annual events. That'll be back next March, and we'll have dates for that soon and then betwixt and between we have a webinar series when we're covering off. And then we have you know a number of dinners. We've got to eat a lot in this job, Ralph, and a number of dinners. We want another Manchester dinner, we're trying to get to Leeds, and that's all about companies and members helping us do that so we can convene.

People always say, what's the topic? What's the theme? We'll just talk about our issues and I think part of the challenge of reigniting the market, post the changes to the main market listing rules, is we're all sat here in London thinking, okay, everybody knows about this and actually you get out of London, and entrepreneurs and CEOs are rightly focusing on their business. They're not looking through the minutia of what the market could be and what the opportunity is and so if we can have an event. So in Manchester in Spring, we took a fund manager, we took the Takeover Panel, the FRC and Sean Farrington from the BBC. So it was a real discussion from all angles. What's going on, what's interesting, what's on your agenda. So we need more of those.

[00:32:41] Ralph Grayson: Good, so hopefully we'vegiven board members some food for thought as to the role the QCA membership might offer them. How do they follow up with you, with the QCA, if they want to read any thought leadership, where will they find it?

[00:32:57] James Ashton: Yeah, there's a lot that's available for non-members on our website, the QCA.com or by all means email me, james.ashton@theqca.com. I'm moderately active on LinkedIn, so I can be reached on there as well.

[00:33:08] Ralph Grayson: Great, I hope people have found this interesting. Certainly I've learned a lot about the role and the aspirations of the QCA. So thank you James so much for joining us.

[00:33:16] James Ashton: Thank you so much.

[00:33:17] Ralph Grayson: I hope that you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and have found it helpful when thinking about how to approach your own path to the boardroom. If you would like to push this a little bit further, Sainty Hird runs a bespoke one to one Programmeme designed specifically to this end. For more information, please visit our website, saintyhird.com, follow us on LinkedIn, and subscribe to the Boardroom Path to receive new episodes. Thank you for listening.