Getting to know our Portfolio Risk Manager, Mike Mawbey

Mike joined the Creative UK Investment team during the summer of 2024 to provide support at the heart of our investment activities. In this newly created role, Mike deploys his significant risk management skills to act in deteriorating positions, as well as providing support to the Investment team on our performing clients across the wider portfolio, and as we deliver our overall credit strategy.

Mike has already started building meaningful and supportive relationships with our portfolio clients. He uses his extensive Risk and Relationship Management experience, gained over three decades of working within the financial services sector. Initially, he started work in banking, then moved into the factoring and invoice finance area of RBS Bank, before specialising in the Asset Based Lending sector, working for a few different financiers. Mike has enjoyed closely managing in excess of 100 different clients over those more recent years, the companies supplying sectors such as aerospace, construction, food manufacturing and the technology space. Having bedded into his role at Creative UK, he’s looking forward to working with businesses in the Creative Industries again; his previous work in this area being when he managed funding provided to a theatre marketing company linked to the West End and Broadway.

During his career, Mike has learned that it’s important to be vigilant for adverse external pressures that can affect business performance, as well as specific issues or circumstances of the client. “Where the trust of the client has been gained early in the relationship, it’s easier to maintain this”, he said. “An open dialogue can often find solutions to both small “bumps in the road” and any major hurdles”, he added.

“I get a real buzz and satisfaction from helping clients to be successful. Working in close partnership with a client strengthens the relationship and deepens our ability to really understand the inner workings of a business, placing us in an ideal position to know when to recommend support, even when facing tricky situations. A loss of a key customer perhaps. Or a (hopefully once in a lifetime) global pandemic. Pre-COVID, I doubt many people would have heard of furlough”, said Mike. “But that was an extremely helpful tool in the Risk Management toolkit, to get a business through to the other side”. One of Mike’s big wins during the turbulent pandemic years was supporting a long-established Yorkshire-based business with covenant waivers. For those unfamiliar with that term, a covenant waiver is when a financier agrees to pause the measurement of usually agreed financial targets. An example might be that the business needs to operate with a level of profitability. If you furlough staff and shut down production, the business won’t be making money. “It was a clear risk for the business and for the financier to hold their nerve pending the workers being allowed back into the factory,” Mike reflected. “But I’m pleased to say they are still successfully trading today and feel that I contributed to that outcome.”

When looking to the future and considering the work he will be doing at Creative UK, Mike commented: “I’m looking forward to contributing where I can to the safe and successful management of all Creative UK’s investment clients. I’m hopeful my impact will be beneficial not only to our clients, but also the Creative UK Investment team, the wider organisation, and as a result, the creative sector as well.”

Outside of work, Mike has all sorts of interests. After decades of trying to improve his golf handicap – with limited success – he’s now more inclined to pick up a camera rather than golf clubs. Three years ago, he also became a Dad again, so family time now involves being close to nature, National Trust visits and lots of photographs.

“I’ve always had an interest in music”, he said, “and whilst I don’t play any instruments (I prefer to leave the piano playing to my wife) I really want to get back to seeing more live music events in the future”. His music interests range from The Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, to a family trip out to see Nick Cope (children’s TV entertainer) perform live at a theatre near Brighton. “I also recall my first Big Screen experience was a James Bond film – I’m looking forward to my daughter enjoying something similar in a few years, but with a stellar improvement in visual effects of course, which can only be attributed to the progress made in technology across the Creative Industries in recent years”.