Directors & Management Team

Hugh Whitcomb

Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Hugh is a Chartered Mechanical Engineer with over 42 years’ experience of industrial operational and investment management across diverse sectors including power, petrochemicals, and general manufacturing. In addition, he holds an OU management diploma and has experience within project roles in both conventional and nuclear power plants having worked with the CEGB and Nuclear Electric in the UK.

After 11 years in the UK Power industry, Hugh’s career included roles at Shell UK as a Senior Engineer and subsequently as Engineering Director at Hickson Fine Chemicals Ltd in Yorkshire. In 1995 he joined BIP Group Ltd as part of the Advent backed MBO/I team and in 2000 he became Group MD of JWH Group Ltd, a privately-owned specialist polymer processing group.

Increasingly specialising in management and turnaround of financially distressed industrial businesses, from 2005 he then worked on a consultancy basis for both major banks and professional advisory companies until 2012 when he joined Hilco Capital as their Lead Industrial Partner.

Siobhán Tyrrell

Chief Financial Officer

Siobhán Tyrrell joined Amcomri as Group CFO in June 2022, overseeing financial management and reporting across the Group. Before joining Amcomri, Siobhán worked in the private equity industry for nearly six years, most recently at Bridges Fund Management, where she started in 2016. Her previous roles included finance positions at Allianz Global Life and Invesco.

Siobhán is a Fellow Chartered Accountant, having qualified with Deloitte, where she primarily audited clients in the financial services industry. She holds a master’s and Honours Degree in Accounting & Finance from the Dublin Institute of Technology.

Mark O’Neill

Investment Director

Mark O’Neill is a Fellow Chartered Accountant with over 17 years of experience in corporate finance, restructuring, and investment. He began his career in Deloitte’s Corporate Finance Team, specialising in restructuring, independent business reviews, and company side advisory. After five years at Deloitte, Mark joined Hilco Capital in 2012, where he worked across and managed a number of distressed, turnaround, and direct lending investments.

At Hilco Capital, Mark gained experience in restructuring and turnaround projects, retirement sales, refinancings, and loan transactions. Since 2020, Mark has worked for the Group, where he leads the sourcing and execution of acquisition opportunities, transaction execution, and portfolio management. He collaborates closely with the management teams across the Group’s portfolio businesses.

Mark holds a first-class honours Bachelor of Business Studies from Trinity College Dublin, and a Masters in Accounting from University College Dublin.

Paul Patrick Mc Gowan

Co-Founder and Non-executive Deputy Chair 

Paul has worked in corporate finance and restructuring for over 20 years and currently serves as Executive Chairman of Hilco Capital, the restructuring and asset-based lending firm, which he established as a joint venture with Hilco Trading Inc in May 2000.

A Chartered Accountant, Paul has acted as Principal on various acquisitions, restructurings and asset-based loans in retail and industrial markets, with particular expertise as they relate to stressed or distressed situations, including, inter alia, transactions involving HMV, Habitat and Alders department stores in the UK, as well as HMV and Bentley Leathers in Canada, Wittner’s and David Jones in Australia and the Karstadt Kompakt department store business in Germany.

Tanya Raynes

Independent Non-executive Chair

Tanya brings strategic, financial and commercial expertise from a variety of senior executive roles within both blue-chip corporates and SMEs. After qualifying with PricewaterhouseCoopers as a Chartered Accountant, Tanya gained structured financing and risk leadership experience with GE Capital.

More recently Tanya held the position of CEO for Centreline, an aviation business, and is currently Non-Executive Chair for that company’s parent, Pula Aviation Services Ltd, having played a role in the sale of Centreline to the Pula group in 2016.

Tanya joined Time Finance plc, an AIM quoted independent specialist finance provider as an independent Non-Executive Director in March 2021, assuming the role of Non-Executive Chair from October 2021. Tanya also assumed the role of Non-Executive Chair for Courier Facilities Ltd, based at Heathrow, in February 2024.

Fraser Gray

Independent Non-executive Director

Fraser is Non-Executive Chairman of Maven Income and Growth VCT 4 PLC and was previously a Nonexecutive Director of Maven Income and Growth VCT 6 PLC. He is a Non-Executive Director of Denholm Energy Services Limited and was, until February 2023 when the company was sold, Non-Executive Chairman of Richard Irvin FM Limited.

He was previously a Non-executive Director of Bonhill Group PLC and sits on a number of advisory boards, supporting smaller companies on growth and strategic matters. He was previously a Managing Director in AlixPartners’ turnaround and restructuring practice, where he led the provision of restructuring and liquidity improvement solutions to clients across a wide variety of industry sectors.

Fraser is a Chartered Accountant and Accredited Mediator and was formerly a Licensed Insolvency Practitioner.

Peter Tierney

Independent Non-executive Director

Peter Tierney has over 30 years’ experience in operating and developing growth orientated service and manufacturing businesses. Until March 2022, Peter was Chairman and Chief Executive officer of Lewmar Marine Limited (“Lewmar Marine”), a private equity backed international marine manufacturing and distribution business.

Peter was initially appointed to lead the turnaround of Lewmar Marine in 2008, returning the business to profit and implementing a growth strategy, before the business was sold to a US trade buyer in 2019, generating a significant return for its private equity backers. Between 2003 and 2008, Peter was Chief Executive Officer of Vector Aerospace, based in Canada, an aerospace maintenance and operating business.

Prior to that, Peter was Managing Director of the Wood Group’s heavy industrial turbine division and also held senior roles at a number of other engineering businesses in the UK and North America and has a degree in mechanical engineering, together with a master’s degree in business.