By way of background, Don was
- Educated at the King's School Macclesfield, the University of Lancaster and then after a period in industry working for the management services department in the head office of an industrial conglomerate he went to the Manchester Business School.
- He joined Citibank in London as an account manager for multinational consumer products companies, and then was headhunted to join Banco Urquijo Hispano Americano Ltd, where he worked in the Eurocurrency syndications and international finance department. He was then made responsible for developing asset-based finance (leasing and hire purchase) and more general UK lending, before spending some time with international "credit workouts" of problem loans.
- To his surprise he became an elected councillor in the London Borough of Ealing, and he served from 1978 to 1986, as Chairman of Finance and then as Deputy Leader. Ealing Council was the third largest London unitary authority with budgets in excess of £300 million (£1bn+ in today's terms) and 12,000+ employees. With his colleagues, he transformed services and considerably improved efficiency. From having some of the highest rates (local property taxation) in West London at the outset by 1986 Ealing had the lowest rates in the area.
- Director of the Greater London Enterprise Board, which was an early community focused public money "Venture Capital" organisation, during the transition from the GLC to the London Boroughs.
- In the mid-1980s with colleagues he was a founder director of a start-up merchant bank in Manchester, and he helped raise significant venture capital funds to establish the bank. The bank later merged with a leading firm of local stockbrokers, and he became a main board director of the holding company with responsibility for corporate finance.
- From 1990, most income generation has been from work with clients provided through Entrepreneurial Concepts and the emphasis has been on general advisory services, corporate finance, MBO/MBI’s and business angel activities.
- In 1992, he became involved with the NHS, in the first place as Chairman of Halton General Hospital NHS Trust. Halton was a small acute hospital with its main base in Runcorn and was an early NHS Trust. It provided general hospital medical and mental health services and it was a top performing hospital in the national statistics in 1995, 1996 and again in 1997. Halton was cited in Parliament several times as an example of best practice. In 2000 he was appointed Chairman of the Cheshire Community Healthcare Trust, as the Board successfully managed the transition to Primary Care Trust status in 2002, in part while the Chief Executive was absent on extended stress-related sick leave.
- In 2001 he became involved with the innovation projects of the NHS in the north-west of England through his role in TRUSTECH - see the public sector section of the website.