Sian O’Neill

Managing Director
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Sian is a publishing professional with over 30 years of experience, and founded Globe Law and Business in 2005 as an imprint at Globe Business Media Group. Prior to that, she ran the London office of Kluwer Law International, part of the Wolters Kluwer Group, and commissioned at Sweet & Maxwell. She believes in the importance of high-quality, lovingly produced content with the utmost attention paid to the editorial, design and production processes. For authors, she aims to offer a professional service, with a personal touch. Outside of publishing, Sian is a qualified yoga teacher and author.

Jim Smith

Chairman
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Jim has some 30 years' experience in professional publishing, including at LexisNexis, where he was on the board of the UK company. He moved from Lexis to found Tottel Publishing, which specialised in tax and law, and which was sold to Bloomsbury Publishing in 2009. Since selling Tottel, Jim has become a shareholder in several publishing companies, and combines this with a range of business interests in other sectors.

Jim is a former Chair of his industry’s trade body, the Independent Publishers Guild. Outside of work, he enjoys sailing, golf, and trying to play jazz piano.

Chris Burton-Brown

CFO
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Chris is a Chartered Accountant who has spent his career as an FD in the publishing sector, mainly with Wolters Kluwer and United Business Media. Chris now works for himself with a portfolio of SME clients, mostly in the publishing sector. Chris is a firm believer that good data and analysis allows good publishing and business decisions to be taken.

Chris is interested in all sports, and remains a keen and active hockey player, runner, golfer and weekend dog walker with his two labradors.

Lauren Simpson

Managing Editor
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Following her law degree, Lauren has worked in business and reference publishing for nearly 30 years, covering a diverse range of subject areas including consumer reference, local government, politics, banking and financial services, marketing, ELT, dictionaries and law. In addition, she has experience of print buying and advertising, and ran a freelance editorial business for over 10 years. At Globe, Lauren looks after the day-to-day editorial management of books and ebooks as they progress through the rigorous editing, typesetting, proof reading and printing processes. Lauren is married with one son and in her spare time enjoys HIIT workouts, walking, cryptic crosswords, chess, good restaurants, overseas travel and being a ‘rugby/football mum’.

Nicola Hornsby

Marketing Manager
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Nicola ('Nic' to her friends and colleagues) is a graduate marketing professional, and has been with the company for more than 10 years. She is a self-confessed data geek, who loves finding ways to reach new corners of her markets. For authors, she will be a key point of contact once a book nears completion, and has been known to drive them to distraction with endless questions in her determination to promote their work fairly and effectively.

Before Globe Law and Business, Nic spent time writing corporate governance reports for PIRC, and in marketing for Reed Elsevier.

Beyond the office, Nic enjoys staying fit, upcycling old furniture, and keeping up with the demands of her busy family.

Joanne Skillicorn

Customer Support Co-ordinator
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With her background in multinational companies such as Fujitsu, Jo is well placed to deliver the best possible service to our global customer base.

In the three years she’s been with us, her role has expanded to include keeping our database running smoothly, and organising our marketing support. There are few loose ends that she is unable to tie up, and if the rest of us are flummoxed by a systems issue or knotty piece of admin, it isn’t long before someone says ‘let’s ask Jo.’

When not juggling data, customers and systems, Jo is no stranger to the gym, and enjoys renovating old houses and looking after her growing family.

Alex Davies

Commissioning Editor
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Alex Davies joins Globe Law and Business as Commissioning Editor from ARK Group, where she spent three-and-a-half years cultivating a list of more than 30 titles spanning law firm strategy and management, business development, talent management, KM and the practice of law. Alex has a degree in Publishing and has worked in the sector for twenty years. She has special interest in technology and law, AI, and how the legal industry will look in the future, as well as being an advocate for women in law. Alex is Editor of our journal on the business of law, Modern Lawyer. She is also a writer and editor and is working on her second novel.

Charlotte Abery

Publishing Assistant
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Charlotte completed her master's degree in English Literary Studies in 2023, specialising in Victorian literature. In her free time, she enjoys jogging, walking her dogs, and cooking for her family.

Pat Dawson

Print Production Manager
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Pat has worked in publishing for over 40 years, and for many of these ran his own travel guide book company, Footprint Handbooks. He has experienced all facets of the industry from accounting to warehousing, but his family background is printing, and so inky fingers are part of his DNA. His deep knowledge of print extends from hot metal to today’s Adobe InDesign, including XML and epub production.

He also has good experience of printing overseas, as well as short run digital print in the UK. Whatever the format or process, the hallmark of his work is a commitment to the high quality that our authors and customers have come to expect.

Away from work, Pat enjoys nothing more than exploring the world, as well as walking Britain’s coastal paths. He lives in a village on the outskirts of Bath and is heavily involved in the local community.

Steve Savory

Head of Digital Publishing
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After some years working as an accounts investigator for HMRC and as a tax adviser for a well known accountancy firm, Steve decided that he was better off leaving numbers to the numerate and joined Tolley Publishing in 1989. Like a centre forward who, entirely unawares, scores a goal because the ball has bounced off the back of his head, he through sheer dumb luck was in the right place at the right time to benefit from the boom in electronic publishing and in 1993 he left the world of print and tangible things behind and was absorbed into The Matrix. He launched the first CD ROM subscription service for UK Tax in 1994 and followed that with the first online tax subscription service in 1998. For the next 20 years, like a jobbing window cleaner, he moved between the various houses of the professional publishing village, setting up online services as he went. In 2021 he joined Globe Law and Business to work on the launch of Globe Law Online. When he is not railing at a world he no longer understands (nor ever did), Steve enjoys watching cat videos on YouTube.

Nicola Saccardo

Editor, The International Family Offices Journal
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Nicola Saccardo is a partner of Charles Russell Speechlys LLP. He is admitted to practise in Italy. His areas of expertise is Italian tax law with a focus on taxation of trusts, estates and HNWIs; relocation of HNWIs to and from Italy; estate tax planning; and international and EU tax law. He is the Chair of the Tax Committee of the International Academy of Estate and Trust Law, a member of the International Estate Planning Committee of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, the Chair of the International Client Global SIG Steering Committee of STEP and a member of the EU Public Policy Committee of STEP. He is the editor of the International Family Offices Journal and of the book Global Mobility of Ultra-High-Net-Worth Individuals, published by Globe Law & Business Limited together with STEP. He has written extensively on Italian tax matters and is ranked as leading Italian tax expert in several legal directories. Chambers HNW has described him as "a great international tax lawyer. … technically superb".