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Our Team

We love what we do - work with us! Meet our team who exceed client expectations through a personal and collaborative approach.
Our Team
Founding Partner
Jon Szehofner

Co-founder and owner at GDFM, Jon is responsible for executing the firm’s strategic direction, overseeing the day-to-day management of the business, leading key client relationships and delivering on GDFM’s people agenda. 

Jon has worked exclusively in the financial services and consulting industries, holding key roles at both Sapient Global Markets and Deloitte before founding GDFM in 2016.

Jon is a trusted business leader who is passionate about delivering high value outcomes for our clients.  He has been involved in a wide range of high-profile engagements for first class financial services businesses with a specific focus on risk advisory and managed services.

Jon graduated in Economics from Cardiff University and is currently studying at Saïd Business School – Oxford University

The right team for your project.
We love what we do.

Work with us.

Management
AllBusiness LeadsProject LeadsBack Office
Head of Business Origination

Peter Newton
Regulatory Compliance Business Lead

Laurence Parish
Risk Business Lead

Toju Dediare
Cardiff Delivery Lead

Aqsa Majeed
Chief of Staff

Aarti O’Donnell
Financial Controller

Balazs Bezeczky
Associate Partner - Head of Cyber Risk

Tony Adams
Director - Interim Head of Regulatory Consulting

Clarisse Mallem
Associate Partner - Head of Regulatory Compliance Practice

Sarah Peaston
Head of Business Origination

Peter Newton

Peter is an adept business origination leader providing solutions for financial crime & operational resilience, and risk management across capital market firms and other regulated markets.  

Responsible for scaling the business, driving origination and the development of new services and alliances to support GDFM’s mission to improve the way regulated institutions manage, treat and optimise their anti-financial crime data and processes as a key component of their risk and governance frameworks.  

Previously he was also responsible for the origination and delivery of a number of innovative digital transformation and market infrastructure initiatives for financial services firms and trade associations in the global capital and commodities markets eco system with an emphasis on digital transformation, trading, legal data management and risk management.

Regulatory Compliance Business Lead

Laurence Parish

Having spent most of his career working for Tier 1 global investment banks, Laurence has a comprehensive understanding of investment banking financial instruments, the products offered to corporate and commercial customers, financial & cyber-crime risks & controls, and the UK regulatory environment. This is underpinned by 15 years’ experience in Financial Services Operations roles. 

Risk Business Lead

Toju Dediare

Toju is a governance, risk, and compliance specialist with over fifteen years of experience consulting in multiple financial services and creative arts sectors. Toju is an APMG-certified change management practitioner who has led several high-profile, complex change programs for major global investment banks and insurance companies. Toju is known to apply superior knowledge of non-financial risk management frameworks to ensure regulatory change solutions delivered are secure and fully compliant with legislation and to manage business readiness.

Toju has a keen interest in information security and data protection and has attained her CIPM, CISMP and GDPR practitioner certifications over the past two years.

Cardiff Delivery Lead

Aqsa Majeed

Aqsa is a Paralegal Team Leader and Head of Delivery (Cardiff) at GDFM with experience in Anti-Money Laundering projects for clients in and outside of the Financial Services. She has extensive experience dealing with the end to end CDD process, EDD of high risk clients and screening. She enjoys creating simplified tools and templates to support the team which then streamline the CDD process to ensure targets are met and high quality work is produced. 

Chief of Staff

Aarti O’Donnell

Aarti, as the first employee of GDFM, has been a valuable part of the team since 2017. 

Aarti is an experienced team leader and business manager. Her role as Chief of Staff for GDFM involves overseeing key business activities as well as supervising workers both in Cardiff and London. Aarti understands that our people are our most important asset and believes that by investing in our people, and fostering a culture of shared values, we energise collaboration, development and innovation, and ultimately drive better client outcomes.

Aarti continues to play an instrumental role in the development of GDFM and our people, and has been central to our expansion from a team of 4 to a company with 30+ employees and growing.

Financial Controller

Balazs Bezeczky

Associate Partner - Head of Cyber Risk

Tony Adams

Tony has an extensive background of investigating national and international serious and organised crime. He was the former Head of Investigations and digital forensics for the National Cybercrime Unit.

Tony has significant experience in the management of critical incidents, particularly relating to high-profile Cybercrime attacks. Tony graduated from the University of Central Lancashire in 2018 with a MSc in Cybercrime Investigations (Dist).

Director - Interim Head of Regulatory Consulting

Clarisse Mallem

Clarisse is an experienced consultant specialised in the delivery of complex regulatory change projects and high-profile Financial Crime projects. She serves as the Interim Head of Regulatory Consulting with the drive to develop client focused solutions and to tailor approaches to remediation that are both pragmatic and cost effective for the clients.

Associate Partner - Head of Regulatory Compliance Practice

Sarah Peaston

Sarah has enjoyed a Financial Services career spanning over two decades in US, UK and European investment banking and Financial Services organisations (Goldman Sachs, Citi, Barclays, Societe Generale).

Sarah has devoted over 10 years of her career to Regulatory Governance and Control; Project and Programme managing and leading Change Management and Quality Assurance teams, covering multijurisdiction Regulatory and Authority Reporting, Client Money and Assets, Customer Protection and overall Regulatory Governance and Control. Sarah has defined and executed regulatory strategy and governance framework to support multiple business types, along the investment chain, leading local and remote teams to deliver and managing relationships with global stakeholders.

Sarah is an industry and regulatory expert and has been active as a leading participant in industry association groups, partnering with peers and regulators to review, shape, influence and advocate regulation. Sarah has appeared as speaker and panellist at various industry events and is also an appointed Independent Non-Executive Director (INED) within a fund house operating Authorised Fund Manager, host ACD and fund administration services.

Sarah is a winner of the Compliance Register Platinum Special Award for Transaction Reporting. 

Advisory Panel

The GDFM Advisory Panel is formed of financial services experts who are all ex-market practitioners and leaders in their respective fields.

The team has a passion for delivery excellence, coaching our future leaders and bringing innovative and efficient solutions to our clients. We firmly believe that our people are our strongest asset and the key to building our culture.

Chairman

Nazir Badat
Non-Executive Adviser

Anthony Fraser
Board Member

Libby Denchfield
Board Member

Brett Newland
Adviser to the Board

Rob De La Rue
Chairman

Nazir Badat

Naz Badat has more than 30 years of experience in Financial Services covering Finance, Operations and business roles at Morgan Stanley, UBS and HSBC. Most recently, Naz was the COO for the Markets Business in HSBC where he had responsibility for the organisational, process/technology and regulatory developments in the division. Naz was also a board member of LCH for many years and headed up their Risk Committee. Naz works with the GD Financial Markets to develop its client offerings as Chairman and Senior Adviser.

Non-Executive Adviser

Anthony Fraser

Anthony Fraser is an advisor with GD Financial Markets, working with the partners to develop client solutions. He has extensive experience in financial service operations including technology implementations and regulatory processes. Anthony is a chartered engineer and a member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology.

Board Member

Libby Denchfield

Libby brings over 25 years of global banking and finance expertise, across a variety of compliance, risk, operations and front office roles. She sits on the FMSB Conduct and Ethics Sub-Committee, and serves as the Head of Conduct Industry Group for Retail and Wholesale Banking. She is also an active Trustee and Treasurer in the Charity sector.

Board Member

Brett Newland

Brett, partner at PCB Partners, is a Chartered Management Accountant (CIMA) and former Accenture Managing Director level executive with 28 years of Global experience spanning financial, commercial and operational roles across all industry segments.

Adviser to the Board

Rob De La Rue

GD Financial has appointed the professional services firm RSM to provide technical and operational support to the business. The RSM team is led by Rob De La Rue, who draws on a wide array of technical support teams including Accountancy, Tax, Payroll and Transactions specialists.

Rob joined RSM as a Partner in 2018 having previously held senior positions in multinational groups in the media and retail sectors. Whilst primarily a tax specialist, Rob’s extensive commercial experience and focus on advising dynamic groups to help achieve their strategic objectives (through both organic growth and acquisitions/IPOs) means that he and the wider RSM team are ideally placed to support GD in our business aspirations.

OPEN VACANCIES

JUNIOR CONSULTANT

This is an exciting opportunity for a university graduate who is looking for a challenging role. We are committed to investing in new talent who want a career in financial services and our culture is one of learning and professional development through hands-on specialist training and project-specific roles. Now is the ideal time for the right candidate to join as you’ll be given the opportunity to work closely with the company partners and be at the centre of this exciting period of expansion for the firm.  

Click here for full details