Carve-outs and separations
Establish authority, preserve operating continuity and create a governable standalone structure.
Special Adviser — Special Situations
Independent judgement.
Forged through 13 years presiding over Courts Martial.
Decisions that can be acted upon.
Evidence tested. Competing arguments examined. Judgements reached without allowing rank, confidence or institutional convenience to determine the answer.
Recommendations are not outcomes. The work establishes what the evidence supports, identifies the decisions required, clarifies who has authority and determines how those decisions can be put into effect.
Independent judgement directed towards executable decisions.
A decision before a report
The Friction Point
You know the moment. A board is presented with competing accounts of what has happened.
Legal counsel concludes one thing. Operations insists on another. Finance has reached a third conclusion. The Chair looks for consensus. There is none.
The danger is institutional convenience: a narrative that causes the least disruption to the hierarchy that produced it, an assertion accepted because of its source, or the hope that the organisation can move on without establishing what actually occurred.
Capital is committed, people are appointed and strategic choices are made on assumptions nobody has been required to defend independently.
When accounts diverge, the task is not to declare consensus. It is to separate what is known from what is asserted.
Test the differences that matter
Thirteen years presiding over Courts Martial developed a discipline of hearing competing accounts, testing evidence and distinguishing legal and factual questions from confident presentation. It is not the work of a civilian judge or a claim that courtroom standards of proof are mechanically imported into commercial decisions.
First identify what the specialists genuinely agree upon. Then isolate the differences, assumptions and missing evidence. Not every disagreement matters to the decision; find those capable of changing the outcome, the time available and the authority needed.
Independence means being willing to challenge the strongest presentation in the room without treating its author as an opponent. A persuasive argument is still an argument. Rank and institutional convenience do not make it evidence.
From judgement to decisions that can be acted upon
The required output is not simply a polished report. Identify the decisions that need to be taken, who is authorised to take them, what evidence can support them, how they affect one another and what would require a change of course.
An adviser does not acquire executive authority by virtue of being appointed. Where implementation remains with the board or executive, the decisions must be designed for those people to execute. Where continuing authority is expressly granted, the mandate can extend into implementation and assurance.
Evidence tested. Judgement exercised. Decisions made executable. That is the work.
Establish reality where competing professional narratives have produced paralysis.
Thirteen years as President of Courts Martial: independent judgement where evidence conflicts and rank, confidence, institutional pressure or polished advocacy must not decide the answer. Explore the broader record →
Steven distinguishes evidence from competing narratives, clarifies decision rights and turns ambiguity into decisions that principals can act upon.
“spearheaded efforts at a national level to unify the government”
Selected from 19 public professional recommendations on LinkedIn. Review selected supporting evidence →
- Scrutinise the evidence Separate fact, inference, assertion and aspiration.
- Map authority and incentives Reveal control, constraints and leverage.
- Recover optionality Determine what can still be protected, recovered and executed.
Formation: thirteen years as President of Courts Martial — independent judgement in high-consequence decisions applied across capital, governance, operations, risk and institutional behaviour, supported by primary documentation of temporary national-level exercise command.
Board and committee experience includes two years chairing an Audit Board and wider audit, assurance and risk responsibilities. Experience across risk, major real-estate portfolios, and HR and workforce change—including TUPE and trade-union engagement and negotiation—helps integrate audit, people and asset evidence when professional accounts conflict.
Location and working model: UK or international; on-site, hybrid and remote arrangements are considered according to the mandate. Opening-stage and control-recovery interventions will ordinarily require substantial on-site presence.
Relevant mandate contexts
Transaction and sovereign contexts
Steven’s experience is relevant to carve-outs, buy-and-build platforms and cross-border special situations where operating integration, capital protection, geopolitical and sovereign risk, and senior-government engagement must be considered together.
Buy-and-build and platform formation
Test the integration thesis and align acquired capability, capital, governance, people and execution.
Cross-border and sovereign risk
Assess political, institutional and stakeholder conditions, informed by direct engagement at prime-ministerial, presidential, ministerial and senior-command level.
Judicial responsibility
Thirteen years of judicial responsibility
For thirteen years, alongside his other appointments, Steven served as a President of Courts Martial.
Courts Martial broadly mirrored Crown Court proceedings. As President, Steven held responsibility for the court, its orderly and independent conduct and the integrity of its deliberations. The Judge Advocate directed the court on matters of law and ensured that any sentence remained lawful and proportionate; that legal function did not transfer chairmanship or responsibility for the court away from the President.
Steven participated with the other members in determining findings and, where required, sentence. He was neither the Judge Advocate nor the sole decision-maker. The responsibility was collective, but the court remained under his chairmanship.
The Court Martial was not merely a civilian jury transplanted into a military setting. It existed so that Service personnel could be tried according to law while military conduct, duty and discipline were judged by people capable of understanding their operational meaning. The Judge Advocate safeguarded legality; the President retained responsibility for the court and led the Service judgement exercised collectively by its members.
- the law sets the boundary;
- the Judge Advocate protects legal compliance and proportionality;
- the President and court members apply Service law, military standards and professional judgement to the evidence;
- the chain of command does not determine the outcome.
The experience required Steven to separate evidence from assertion, test competing accounts without prejudging them, ensure that each member was heard and lead the court towards a reasoned decision under law. It was judicial responsibility exercised under consequence, not merely exposure to a legal process.
Law and procedure constrain the decision, but they do not make the judgement.
Purpose
Establish what is actually happening, what remains recoverable, where authority and incentives sit, what should be protected and which interventions remain executable.
The work begins before a preferred solution is selected. Judicial experience contributes evidential discipline and independence; executive and principal experience supply the capacity to test advice against capital, operating reality and the practical limits of implementation.
The task is to distinguish documentary fact from assertion, identify unsupported narratives and design a sequence that preserves the greatest legitimate optionality.
Typical engagements
Concrete questions for boards, sponsors and private-equity operating partners.
- Test an investment thesis against operating evidence under pressure
- Diagnose portfolio-company underperformance
- Assess exit readiness and recoverable-value constraints
- Review post-deal integration failure
- Challenge valuation, capital-structure and recovery assumptions
- Provide embedded post-acquisition commercial and management assurance
The WFEL record provides a documented example of an embedded post-MBO commercial appointment; the additional sponsor-assurance remit remains separately classified as Steven’s first-hand account. Review the evidence boundary →
Decision sequence
Cross-domain integration
Professional maps need not agree to be decision-useful.
Lawyers, accountants, bankers, engineers, operators and security specialists examine different abstractions of the same territory. A fusion-cell approach preserves each specialist conclusion while identifying interdependencies, conflicting assumptions and consequences that sit between professional disciplines.
The objective is not consensus. It is an integrated decision picture from which the principal can act with uncertainties and trade-offs still visible.