David Mason

Chief Executive Officer

David Mason CEO David joined Cornhill in 2016 bringing with him over 30 years’ experience in financial markets for the last 25 years he has operated as an executive director at international group level, with 17 years being in the FX markets with companies such as HiFX Plc and The Currency Cloud. His experience covers a number of business areas including M&A, finance, corporate treasury, compliance and legal, operations and business development. His career start as a trainee accountant with Reuters where he worked for 10 year moving up from junior accountant to becoming deputy head of Head Office Accounting running a team of more than 25 people. During his time at Reuters he worked as part of the team that floated the company on the stock exchange. David left Reuters to join Datastream (a Dun & Bradstreet group company) as Assistant Financial Controller and then made his first move into the financial markets moving to W I Carr in the role of Assistant Financial Controller for their UK operations. David moved through the ranks at W I Carr progressing from Assistant Financial Controller to the position of Deputy Group FD, the group included all of W I Carr’s, Asia, Europe, US and UK operations.

In 1993 after 7 years at W I Carr David together with two former W I Carr directors set-up Kerry Securities a specialist Asian broking company, the backers to the business were the Malaysian Kwok family who owned Kerry Trading and Shangri-La Hotels and also Dr, Khoo Kay Peng who owned Malaysian United Industries and was the majority shareholder in Laura Ashley. This business was sold to Cresvale Group in 1996 and subsequently sold Philip Securities a large privately owned Singaporean securities house.

David moved into the FX markets in 2001 with HiFX Plc who were one of the UK’s largest independently owned FX/Payment businesses, being the companies first externally appointed director. David joined the business as Group CFO and was instrumental in the development of the business between 2001 and 2008, taking the business from a £10m to a £60m valuation and achieving the feat of getting the company into the Sunday Times Fast Track 100 for 3 consecutive year, something achieved by only 4 companies at that time. HiFX eventually sold in 2014 for in excess of £140m.

After leaving HiFX in 2009 David became a co-founder of The Currency Cloud. As a founding member he raised the majority of the initial investment require to start business and was one of 6 people who started the business from a basement office in London. The business was and has been developed into one of the top FinTech businesses in the UK offering it’s platform to some of the major international payment companies. David was the CFO for the business and remains a shareholder in the business and together with the management team was a major driver in building the business from a starting valuation of circa £1m to its current day valuation of circa. £200m.

Paul Smithers

Director of Dealing & Sales

Paul joined Cornhill in 2015 as a Senior Dealer, in his time at Cornhill he has built a large portfolio of corporate clients by assisting them in managing their currency risk. In November 2018 he took up the role of Head of Dealing & Sales.

Paul started out his extensive career in the financial markets spanning more than 30 years at Midland Bank, which later became part HSBC. The early years were spent on the London International Financial Futures Exchange as a floor broker quickly moving through the ranks to become a floor manager and managing a team of more than 50 people.

In the year 2000 Paul transitioned to a commodity broker on the International Petroleum Exchange, where he spent 6 years broking Brent Crude Futures and was promoted to head of the Desk. Paul pursued his long-term ambition of moving from broking to trading and set up his own company, which was self-financed and where he actively traded both commodity futures and FX over a 9-year period.

Away from an established career in the city he is a family man with 4 wonderful children, and outside of family life he is keen golfer with a respectable handicap of 12 his other passion being football and for all his sins he is a West Ham fan.

Elliott Smith

Head of Risk & Compliance

Elliott joined Cornhill in 2015, having previously graduating from Brighton University. In a short period of time, he moved up through the business to become Head of Compliance, developing an extensive knowledge of the business and regulatory environment. Elliott also has an interest in business development management, and helping the business scale by embracing technology.

Having completed an Advanced Certification in AML by the International Compliance Association, Elliott will broaden his regulatory accreditation by obtaining his Diploma in Financial Crime Prevention.

When he is not at work Elliott likes to keep fit and plays hockey for his boyhood club where he is also Men’s Club Captain.

Sam Perry

Head of Finance

Sam is a qualified certified chartered accountant with a wealth of experience built up over 7 years across various industries & company sizes. In his previous role, Sam worked for venture capitalist Blenheim Chalcot’s, investment manager BCI, where he gained valuable exposure to an M&A environment & scaling seed & early stage start-ups. Before that he was a management accountant for the UK’s largest distributor of alcohol Conviviality PLC, where he managed the commercial finance team.

He holds a degree in Commerce majoring in finance & property from a top ranked Australian University.

Sam is an Australian & enjoys cycling, brewing beer & travelling.