Giles reshuffles senior finance team

Giles has completed a reshuffle of its finance team as it prepares for a potential flotation.

The broker has created a chief financial officer role and appointed a new finance director. Sources close to the broker speculated that the company is strengthening its senior management team in preparation for an exit via a flotation as early as 2012.

It has also emerged this week that the head of Giles’s Glasgow operation, Lorraine Dillett, has left the company.

Deputy finance director Mark Chambers has been promoted to finance director with immediate effect and will sit on the board. He is succeeding Paul Matson, who becomes the group’s new chief financial officer.

Matson will work closely with group chief executive Chris Giles on all aspects of strategy and will continue to have full responsibility for all tax-related issues and relationships with external advisers. Matson joined from Coral Bookmakers in 2008, replacing Derek Gardner.

Chambers joined from Coral at the same time and has more than 10 years’ experience in senior financial roles.

In Scotland, Dillett, who also sits on the main board of Biba, is understood to have accepted a role at Aon.

A Giles spokesman said: “The Glasgow business is robust and performing well in a given market."

The Glasgow branch will now be overseen by Murray MacAra, who has been handed wider responsibility for Scotland. MacAra currently looks after Giles's operations in Inverness, Aberdeen, Fort William, Skye and Dundee and has been with Giles for around 10 years.