Bob Bigley

Bob Bigley

Bob Bigley has an MA in economics from Queens’ College, Cambridge and qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Touche Ross. He spent 20 years in corporate finance, with Kleinwort Benson, Hambros and as a partner in charge of KPMG’s corporate finance business in the north of England. These roles involved advice on financing, buying and selling private and quoted businesses ranging in size from small family companies to multi-billion-pound international mergers.

In 2005 he moved to Town Centre Securities PLC, a publicly quoted property company, where he was the director responsible for financing, strategy and running the operating businesses.

In 2010 he became Director of Corporate Development at R&R Frozen Foods, formerly Richmond Ice Creams. R&R rapidly grew to become Britain’s largest ice cream company and produced ‘own brand’ ice cream for most of the major supermarkets before expanding further still to become Europe’s largest ice cream company. The company, which had started with £40k of ice cream making equipment and five employees in a disused farm dairy building, was sold in 2015 for £715m.

Since then Bob has been researching and investing in early-stage businesses. He is a director/shareholder at QOBO Holdings, which is a software solutions company, at Theta Technologies (non-destructive testing) and TapSimple, which is a start-up offering contactless giving to the charity sector. He is Chair of the finance committee at the multi-million-pound Auckland Project, the charity through which Jonathan Ruffer is restoring the bishop’s palace at Auckland Castle its former glory for the nation.

Bob’s son and daughter were educated at Cundall and he was a governor from 2008 to 2012.