The leadership team

Ed Wray

Non-executive Director

Edward co-founded Betfair in 1999 and was its first Chief Executive. He also set up the business in Australia. He became Chairman in 2006. Betfair floated on the London Stock Exchange in October 2010, valued at £1.4 billion. He has twice been named Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year. Edward stepped down from his role as Chairman of Betfair in 2012, and currently holds directorships at Funding Circle (the peer to business lending site) and LMAX Limited (the world's leading exchange for FX), and is Chair of the Development Board of the charity YouthNet.

Jo Oliver

Non-executive Director

Jo is is involved in the Octopus Ventures team’s investment process, portfolio management and fundraising activities. Jo became a Venture Partner in 2005 and then joined the team in May 2009. He has run several businesses of his own ranging from publishing to property development, and made numerous angel investments as Octopus Venture Partner. Jo sits on a number of the Boards of the companies in which we have invested, including TouchType (SwiftKey), Amplience, Iovox and Vega-Chi. He is also is a Non-Executive Director on the Titan VCT 5 Board and a member of the Investment Committee of Octopus Investments’ £1bn Specialist Finance business.

Marshall King

Non-executive Director

Marshall King has over 20 years’ experience as a Chief Executive in the financial services, property and technology sectors. He has started, grown, acquired and sold companies in this period, working alongside venture capital and private equity backers. Having started his career as a management consultant with Bain and Company, Marshall founded his first business Improveline - a property claims and repairs business - in 1999 which he scaled and successfully sold to Homeserve in 2005, remaining in the business as a Managing Director. Further CEO roles followed at a range of private equity backed companies; RFIB Group, a Lloyds of London insurance broker where he led a new growth strategy for the business; Decision Insight Information Group, a group of property-related due diligence companies, where he returned the group to profitable growth over a two year tenure; and DeepCrawl, a search engine optimisation company where he led the group’s fundraising and opened the company’s US subsidiary. Marshall has also held Non-Executive Director positions at Brandwatch, Align.Work and LCM Environmental. He received an MBA from INSEAD, and is an international athlete for Yachting, having represented Ireland at the Atlanta Olympics.

Warren Bath

CEO

Warren is a Chartered Accountant with over 20 years of experience within financial services and investment. Before joining Property Partner, he spent seven years in mergers and acquisitions at Sky Plc, most recently as M&A Director, leading a significant number of acquisitions, disposals and strategic reviews. He also spent a year as Acting Director of Treasury, managing Sky’s capital structure, liquidity, bank and bond financing, etc. Prior to this he spent several years at Morgan Stanley as Vice President, Investment Banking in the Media and Communications group for Europe, Middle East & Africa. Warren’s other previous roles include, Corporate Finance Manager for Virgin Mobile (London), Corporate Development Senior Analyst for Vodafone (Sydney), and Audit & Business Advisory Senior for Arthur Andersen (Perth), where he qualified as a Chartered Accountant.

Robert Weaver

Chief Investment Officer

Robert is one of the UK’s most experienced residential property professionals. He was previously at the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), where he was a Global Director responsible for more than 11,000 residential units. Prior to that, he was Head of Residential Funds at Invista Real Estate Investment Management (subsequently acquired by Palmer Capital). While there, he ran funds owning >2000 properties, with an aggregate value of c.£500m and spanning private rentals, student accommodation, serviced apartments and ground rents. Before his career in property fund management, he was at Savills for 10 years. He headed a specialist team that undertook portfolio valuations and the sale and disposal of residential investment portfolios. He also set up the Savills Auction department and the student accommodation team. Robert is a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and was the keynote speaker at their 2014 residential property conference. He also sits on the residential committee of the British Property Federation.

Daniel Gandesha

Founder & Director

Daniel is a Chartered Accountant and member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales ("ICAEW"), with over nine years experience within financial services and investment activities. Prior to founding Property Partner, he served as Head of Commercial Development and Startup Investments at Sky Plc, a UK listed FTSE 100 organisation, responsible for equity investments in, and commercial deals with, technology startup companies. Prior to this, Daniel was a manager within Sky Plc’s Mergers and Acquisitions Corporate Finance team, executing acquisition and disposal transactions. Prior to joining Sky Plc, Daniel was employed by financial services firm KPMG, latterly advising clients on mergers and acquisitions transactions across both the buy-side and sell-side, and formerly engaging in financial statement assurance (audit) activities where he also obtained his Chartered Accountancy qualification. Daniel is an FCA approved person and has also been a residential property landlord for the past six years.