Paul Cartwright

Paul has a finance background in commercial and residential development, undertaking a number of limited and non recourse debt funded developments and institutional forward investment sale transactions in the late 1980s and early 90s.

In the mid 90s as Commercial Director of Wimpey Construction Investments Ltd he negotiated the first PFI in the Higher Education sector with Greenwich University and the Framework Agreement for the Chalkhill Housing Redevelopment in the London Borough of Brent.

In the late 1990s Paul joined Rotch Property as a Director of their Structured Finance Team and lead the Wrapped Bond Financed Chichester Mental Health PFI to Financial Close.

Paul joined David Toplas at Mill Group in 2000 and led Project Agreement and Subcontract negotiations on the Newham and Redbridge PFI Schools projects and the Farnham and Darlington PFI Health projects for the Norwich Union Public Private Partnership Fund (NUPPPF). Following the establishment of the Investors in the Community Fund (IIC) in 2003, Paul was responsible for the negotiation of the Miles Platting Social Housing PFI and the Lambeth, Barnet, Enfield and Redcar Street Lighting PFIs.

Since 2009 Paul has been Managing Director of Mill Asset Management that provides Fund and Asset Management to IIC and Asset Management to NUPPP.

David Toplas

David has a background in corporate finance and property and has developed a number of innovative fund structures during his career, ranging from BES schemes to PPP funds for institutional investors seeking long term cashflow returns.

Between 1988 and 1993, David gained much of his experience as a director in 24 unquoted public limited companies operating housing, student accommodation and home reversion property portfolios with a market value of over £140 million.

David founded Mill Group in 1994 and the company has become a successful property and finance group best known for its infrastructure investment funds. These are now managed fully by Mill Asset Management and comprise close to £1billion of PFI investments in housing, schools, health and other community projects.

In 2003 the 'Investors in the Community' programme was established by David and his partners to provide a focus for their activities in the long term. As part of this PPP programme Mill Group and Mill Asset Management have delivered schools, community health and other accommodation projects, which have nearly all been funded with 100% risk capital from their in-house investing funds.

Currently David’s main business activities revolve around residential investment, with a particular focus on private sector co-investment. A long term advocate of institutional investment in UK residential, David is interested in the private co-investment market and how the evolution of this sector will be able to provide a sustainable and long term opportunity for institutional investment while bridging the equity gap for potential homebuyers.

Tom Symes

Tom is the Chief Executive Officer of Mill Asset Management. In addition to this role he chairs and acts as a director on a number of the SPV boards in the IIC Fund project portfolio.

Tom was a partner at solicitors Nabarro for 14 years before leaving to join his client Mill Group in 2001. At Nabarro he led one of the property departments and acted on a number of the early stage PFI projects including the first DGH to reach financial close. He also specialised in advising quoted developers and public sector clients on major shopping centre and regeneration projects.

At Mill Group he was Commercial Director responsible for taking a number of PFI projects to financial close for the NUPPP and IIC Funds. These projects were in the education, health, local authority accommodation and street lighting sectors. He was also heavily involved in fund raising and fund management. When Tom and the other Mill Group shareholders sold that business to Land Securities Trillium in 2006 he became Head of Legal there and continued to manage the NUPPP and IIC Funds' projects.

In 2009 Tom, Paul Cartwright and David Toplas bought the management activities back from LST and set up Mill Asset Management which continues to manage the NUPPP and IIC Funds' projects and is carrying out similar activities for other clients.