A selection of our personnel

David Lew

Director

David read Economics at the University of Kent at Canterbury and graduated with a BA Honours degree in 1970.

David trained with BDO Stoy Hayward, qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 1973 and became a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in 1976.

After working for a USA publicly quoted computer consultancy company, David returned to the profession, joining Landau Baker & Co in 1981.

David’s wide-ranging portfolio of clients includes medium sized groups and companies in the manufacturing, service and property sectors. David also specialises in financial planning, including pensions and investments and has been awarded the Financial Planning Certificate by the Chartered Insurance Institute.

Michael Durst

Director

Michael qualified as a Chartered Accountant in July 1979 and became a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in 1991. Michael worked his articles at a medium-sized London firm, and, after qualifying, specialised in tax at Price Waterhouse, London, for 2 years.

Michael then went into business for six years culminating in the sale of the business to a public company. On returning to the profession in 1988, Michael built up a small portfolio of clients and then, in 1990, joined Landau Baker & Co as a partner.

Michael specialises in the education sector, and has built up one of the largest portfolios of schools and academies as clients in the UK over the last two decades.

In addition, Michael has other clients in various trades and professions.

Jake Lew

Director

Jake graduated with a 1st class degree in Economics and Finance from Manchester University in 2004.  Upon leaving university, he joined BDO where he obtained his ACA qualification.

In 2007 he became accountant and financial advisor for an entrepreneurial individual in the leisure, retail and property sectors, advising on strategic investments and investment opportunities. In 2010 he became the finance director for a number of companies in the sport, entertainment, publishing and property industries, installing internal and financial controls and successfully growing and selling businesses.

In 2014 he joined Landau Baker as an audit manager, specialising in school and academy audits.

Jake is also responsible for a broad range of clients outside the education sector, namely in the property sector.

Carly Pinkus

Director

Carly graduated with a 1st class degree in Economics and Accounting from Cass Business School.  She then joined the audit and assurance department at Grant Thornton, specialising in media and leisure and academy audits and qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 2011.

As an audit manager, she continued to specialise in the academic sector. Amongst her responsibilities, she is responsible for tailoring the school and academy audit programmes to ensure all audit work is up to date with relevant accounting and audit standards and ESFA guidelines.

In addition, Carly is responsible to various clients in other sectors, ranging from personal tax clients to charity audits.

Jonny Weatherall

Audit Manager

Jonny trained as a Chartered Accountant within the audit department of Broomfield & Alexander, the largest independent firm of accountants and charity specialists in Wales, qualifying in 2011. He was based in the audit department and was responsible for large group audits across a wide range of industries.

In 2012, he joined medium-sized London firm Gerald Edelman, again working in the audit department, specialising in financial services, and dealing with both UK based and overseas companies.

Jonny joined Landau Baker in 2016 as audit manager, with a responsibility for a wide-ranging portfolio of clients, particularly in the not-for-profit and education sector.

Gavin Burne

Senior Auditor

Gavin Burne qualified as a Chartered Accountant in South Africa in 1978 and spent 2 years in London with Peat, Marwick Mitchell & Co gaining audit experience. He then returned to South Africa and formed his own company which imported and distributed cash register equipment.

In 1998 he joined Landau Baker Limited. He has extensive experience in school audits and was involved as an accredited assessor in the Financial Management in Schools (FMSiS) external assessment process.

He has been involved with academies from their inception and has extensive experience in advising on accounting and internal control systems in academies as well as carrying out academy audits.

David Nicholson

Senior Auditor

David Nicholson qualified as a Chartered Accountant with a medium sized firm, PKF in London. On qualifying, he joined Trust House Forte PLC as a management accountant for several years.

Subsequently he spent some years growing and developing his own business within the Human Resources Capital management sector, growing the business both in the UK and Internationally.

Following several years within the financial services sector, David joined Landau Baker in 2015 and specialises in school and academy audits.

Charlotta Chen

Senior Auditor

Charlotta graduated with BA(HONS) in Accounting and Finance from London South Bank University in 2004. In 2004 she then joined Bramah Security Centres Limited as a sole accountant, while studying for the ACCA part-time for 3 years.

She qualified as Certified Chartered Accountant in United Kingdom in 2007 and joined Landau Baker Limited. She has extensive experience in schools and academy audits. She has been carrying out statutory audits for academies since 2012 and has vast experience in advising on accounting and internal controls as well as carrying out GTP (Graduate Teacher Program) audits for teacher training schools and EOYC audits (Teachers’ Pension audit).

Adewale Adeseun

Senior Auditor

Ade holds a degree in Accounting and is a qualified Chartered Certified Accountant. He has worked in practice for over 10 years and gained extensive experience in the financial audits of commercial and public sector organisations.

In his current role at Landau Baker, he primarily carries out statutory audits and completes responsible officer review work for academies. He focuses on the examination of financial control systems and gauging levels of financial control risks within academies.

He is experienced in identifying and reviewing financial controls, procedures, policies, legislation and regulations and advising on changes to be made.

Anastasiya Boyd Gibb

Payroll Manager

Ana graduated from Agricultural University in Ukraine as a Technology Engineer in 2000. After joining accountancy firm Anthony Croft Ezekiel Ltd as an administrator and account assistant in 2006, she completed AAT NVQ in 2007 and progressed to an office manager/accountant role. Ana has extensive experience in payroll, management accounts, VAT and bookkeeping.

In 2016, Ana joined Landau Baker as a bookkeeper and to manage the payroll department. Amongst her responsibilities, Ana prepares VAT returns for various clients and advises clients on all payroll related issues, including pension queries and CIS returns.

Jennifer Connayne

Management Accountant

Jennifer Conayne qualified as a Chartered Accountant in New Zealand in 2008 whilst working for PricewaterhouseCoopers. Half of her year was spent supervising the school audits of approximately 140 local schools, the other half of the year was spent on preparing annual accounts and tax computations.

In 2010 she, along with two colleagues, started their own business, accounting specifically for schools.

In 2015 Jennifer returned home to the UK and joined Landau Baker in October that year. She specialises in management accounting.

Ackmed Munsoor

Management Accountant

Ackmed is a fellow certified chartered accountant, having qualified in 1995. He has over 25 years’ experience in public practice.

Over the years, he developed an extensive range of professional experience within the audit, tax and accounting fields. He has been involved in projects such as due diligence, forecasting and budgeting. He works on clients across various sectors including property, manufacturing , retail, pension funds, services and charities.

Melody Ebrahimoff

Bookkeeper

Bio coming soon...

Debra Morris

Management Accountant

Debra qualified as a Chartered Accountant at BDO and after qualification she worked in the insolvency department. She then moved on to work as a management accountant in the retail sector for a number of years, where she took a career break, whilst undertaking various positions in charities. She returned to work with Landau Baker as a consultant working on corporate, property and charity clients.

Kavit Shah

Accounts manager

Kavit is a qualified chartered accountant and has vast experience working in small to medium size practices. Kavit’s role at Landau Baker is primarily in assisting academies to meet various deadlines set by the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA).

Kavit’s responsibilities include finalisation of year end accounts, preparation of academy accounts returns, budget forecast return outturn (BFRO) and land and buildings collection tool. Kavit is also responsible for the teachers’ pension audit of the end of year certificate for our academy client base.

Nikki Nicholas

Office Manager

Nikki joined Landau Baker in 2004 after working for several years in the investment banking industry as an Administration, Payroll and Accounts Manager at Barclays Capital and Nomura International.

She is multi skilled, constantly multitasking several projects and, over the years, has held several roles within the company. In her support role to the Directors, she is especially involved in the schools and academies industry, as she was a teacher before her career change to the corporate sector.

She has a BA Degree in English and Italian Languages and Literature and is fluent in several foreign languages, including, Macedonian, Croatian, Italian, Bulgarian and Spanish.