Non Executive Directors

Alastair Findlay - Senior Independent Director and Vice Chair

Alastair Findlay took up the role of Non-Executive Director on 1st April 2005. Alastair is a chartered accountant. After a career as an investment banker in London, he spent ten years as Finance Director of The Mersey Docks and Harbour Company, a stock exchange listed company based in Liverpool.

He left Mersey Docks at the end of 2005 after its acquisition by a privately owned group. Alastair has expertise and experience in corporate financial matters, corporate governance including investor relations, acquisitions & disposals and pensions. He was a trustee of the Dock Charitable Fund charity.

Alastair is an independent director of the trustees of the AMEC plc Staff and Executive pension funds and is a non-executive director of Skipton Building Society.

 

Samantha Dixon

Mrs Samantha Dixon lives in Upton, Chester. She was brought up locally and has lived and worked in the area for most of her life. Her background is in Press and public relations most notably working for international fine art auctioneers Sotheby's at their New Bond Street Salerooms. In 1997, Samantha began working for Chester's MP, Christine Russell as her Parliamentary Office Manager until the birth of her first child. She is now a full-time mother with three daughters, all born at the Countess of Chester Hospital. Samantha was appointed in 2002 for a term of four years and re-appointed in 2006 for a further three.

  

 

 

Andrew Higgins

Andrew is a chartered accountant with a background in audit and advisory services.  In 2010 he retired from KPMG, a major accounting and advisory firm, after a career spanning 33 years in the UK and overseas.

Andrew has experience of working with a variety of commercial and not-for-profit organisations, with particular emphasis on the financial services and housing sectors.  He has expertise in all aspects of audit and corporate governance, and has advised on a wide range of corporate transactions.  From 2008 to 2010 Andrew worked in Japan in an international liaison role and advised US and European multi-nationals with interests in the Far East.

Now settled south of Tarporley, Andrew pursues a variety of interests including volunteering with a community based Credit Union.

 

 

 

Laura Carstensen

Laura Carstensen is Deputy Chairman of the Competition Commission, a role she took on after a long and distinguished career in City law as a partner in Slaughter and May.  She also holds a number of other appointments including as a Member of the Co-operation & Competition Panel for NHS-Funded Services, a Governor of London Metropolitan University, Chair of the Council of The Women's Library and a Non-Executive Director of Chester Renaissance.  She was educated at Withington Girls School in Manchester, read English at St. Hilda's College, Oxford and was admitted as a solicitor in 1987.  She lives with her husband Peter and six children in Flintshire, on Hope Mountain.

 

 

 

 

 

  

Rachel Hopwood

Rachel is a chartered accountant, qualifying with Ernst & Young, a major accounting and advisory firm. After a career in finance and investment banking in the City of London, latterly as an Executive Director at ABN AMRO, she relocated with her family back to Cheshire in 2008. Prior to joining the Board, Rachel was a Non- Executive Director of Western Cheshire PCT and Lay Advisor to West Cheshire Clinical Commissioning Group. She is also a Director in a company providing management and financial consultancy services in the region.

Brought up locally, Rachel was educated at The Queen's School, Chester. She now lives in Clotton with her husband and two children, the youngest of whom was born at the Countess of Chester Hospital.