Our Team

Paul McGowan

Deputy-Chairman

Paul McGowan has been a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountant in Ireland since 1985 and has spent the last 25 years specialising in corporate finance and restructuring, predominantly as Chief Executive and then Executive Chairman of Hilco Capital Limited, the restructuring firm, which he established in May 2000. Paul has been involved in many debt and equity acquisition transactions including buying debt or equity in retail businesses such as HMV, Homebase, Habitat and Allders department stores in the UK; HMV and Bentley Leathers in Canada; Wittner’s and David Jones in Australia; and the Karstadt Kompakt department store business in Germany. Through Hilco Capital, McGowan has also invested in a number of manufacturing businesses generating significant value from operational turnarounds and/or financial restructuring. Through his family office, Paul has unrelated investments in the entertainment, security, real estate and manufacturing sectors.

Hugh Whitcomb

Chief Executive Officer

Hugh is a Chartered Mechanical engineer with over 42 years’ experience of industrial operational and investment management across a range of industry sectors including power, petrochemicals and general manufacturing and engineering.

After qualifying and training in the UK power industry he progressed through several operational, engineering and project roles in both conventional and nuclear power stations and HV grid transmission. He subsequently joined Shell UK as a Senior Engineer working in downstream refinery engineering and shutdown management subsequently moving from Shell to increasingly focus on distressed industrial business management situations and from 2012 working for Hilco Capital for whom he has acted as Lead Industrial Partner since 2012.

Hugh became CEO of Amcomri Group in 2021 and has developed and led the team in a series of acquisitions and its subsequent growth throughout this period.

Siobhán Tyrrell

Chief Financial Officer

Siobhán is a Chartered Accountant and a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants Ireland with 15 years experience in financial services and corporate reporting.

She joined Amcomri as Group CFO in June 2022 and is responsible for financial management and reporting across the group. Prior to this, she worked in the Private Equity industry for nearly 6 years, most recently at Bridges Fund management having joined in 2016.

Siobhán previously worked at Allianz Global Life and Invesco in a variety of finance roles. She qualified as a chartered accountant with Deloitte, working primarily on audits within the Financial Services industry. She has a Masters and Honours Degree from the Dublin Institute of Technology in Accounting & Finance.

Mark O’Neill

Investment Director

Mark is a Fellow Chartered Accountant and has over 17 years’ experience in Corporate Finance, Restructuring and Financial Management. Mark started his career within the Corporate Finance Team in Deloitte where he qualified as a chartered accountant and specialised in Restructuring, Independent Business Reviews and Company Side Advisory. After 5 years at Deloitte, Mark moved to Hilco Capital in 2012 where he worked across a number of distressed, turnaround and direct lending investments.

More recently since 2020, Mark has worked for Amcomri Group where he plays a leading role in sourcing and implementing acquisition opportunities, transaction execution and portfolio management, as well as working closely with the Management Teams across the various businesses within Amcomri Group.

Mark is a chartered accountant and holds a first-class honours Bachelor of Business Studies (BBS) degree from Trinity College Dublin. He also holds a Master’s in Accountancy from UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School.

Steve Jones

Group Industrial Director - Embedded Engineering

Steve joined Amcomri Group in 2022 and, as Group Industrial Director is responsible for identifying potential acquisition targets, supporting the pre and post-transaction processes and managing strategic and tactical management at board level. Since joining Amcomri, he has managed several businesses within the portfolio, working closely with the leadership teams to develop the investments that ensure profitable returns for the group.

Prior to joining Amcomri Group, in 2017 Steve became Managing Director of an Amcomri-owned business, Industrial Valve Services Ltd. The business was in distress and Steve managed a successful turnaround, stabilising the business, deploying a strategy with a focus on financial management, business development & operational control.

Previously Steve was a Director for Swagelok Company, a $2 billion privately held developer of fluid system products, assemblies, and services for the oil and gas, chemical and petrochemical, semiconductor, and transportation industries. During this time, he was responsible for global commercial and field engineering departments managing sustainable growth strategies across the organisation.

His background includes commercial planning, engineering advisory in multiple markets, leadership coaching and development, strategic development planning and business restructuring. Steve is a qualified Mechanical Engineer with 22 years’ experience in the industrial sector.  

Mark Mullen

Group Industrial Director - B2B Manufacturing

Mark is a Certified 6 Sigma Black Belt with over 25 years’ experience in industrial operations and plant management. He has worked in a range of industrial sectors, including Aerospace - in Fixed & Rotary wing environments, Automotive – Tier 1,2, & 3 Oil & Gas – Offshore & Sub Sea alongside general manufacturing and engineering businesses.

Mark has extensive experience in running businesses across multiple functions including procurement, engineering and finance. Over the last 12 years he has specialised in operational turnaround and business performance improvement in industrial environments, in countries such as Saudi Arabia, United States and most of Europe.

Mark has the ability to work with all levels of an organisation to ensure the sustainability throughout the development or turnaround phases and beyond to deliver an improved financial performance on a project by project or consultancy role, working alongside the businesses management teams.

Rhiannon McGowan

Investment Manager

Rhiannon is a Chartered Accountant who started her training with Amcomri in 2020 shortly after graduating from Trinity College Dublin. Rhiannon has experience working across the financial and investment teams in Amcomri, and has gained particular experience working on some of our recent acquisitions including Bex Design & Print, eTrac and Premier Limpet.

Ollie MacDonald

Investment Manager

Ollie is an Investment Manager at Amcomri, bringing five years’ corporate finance experience. Prior to Amcomri, Ollie was a Manager in the M&A team at PwC Auckland, a leading mid-market advisory firm in New Zealand. Ollie’s role consists of identifying and evaluating new opportunities, deal execution and portfolio management.

Charlotte Bowyer

Process Improvement Manager

Charlotte is a Chartered Manager who graduated from Exeter University with a Master’s in Mechanical Engineering. Prior to joining Amcomri, Charlotte worked as an Operations Manager for Royal Mail.  Charlotte is now part of the Amcomri business process improvement team. 

Matt Whitton

Process Improvement Engineer 

Matt is a Process Improvement Engineer with 4 years’ experience from the Aerospace industry. Prior to joining Amcomri in 2024 Matt was an engineer at Rolls-Royce in the Additive Manufacturing team, with experience leading improvement activities, establishing validation and verification strategy and setting up new manufacturing cells.

Tanya Raynes

Independent Non-Executive Chair

Tanya brings a wealth of 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 extensive structured financing 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, having played a role in the sale of Centreline to Pula Ltd in 2016. Tanya has been Non-Executive Chair of Time Finance plc, an AIM-quoted independent specialist finance provider since October 2021.