Lightning Oak
About James
James Walker chairs Nature Impact, a growth company in nature markets, and is a non-executive director of Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust.
He has built his executive career in internal audit, from his first audits at Santander to senior audit leadership at Credit Suisse and UBS. For just as long he has served on boards and committees of his own, beginning with charities. He is a Chartered Internal Auditor and a Fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants.
Today those two careers come together in Lightning Oak, the practice he founded. Through it James offers due diligence to investors before and after a deal, advises boards, family owners and the leaders who run their businesses, and can lead internal audit as a fractional or interim head. Board seats are personal appointments; all other work is contracted with Lightning Oak Limited. While he sits on a board, neither he nor Lightning Oak takes paid advisory, audit or diligence work from that organisation or from its investors about it.
Career
Internal audit leadership in banking
At his most senior James led audit in global investment banking, presenting to the audit committees of legal entities in several countries and working directly with the Prudential Regulation Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority. Earlier in his career he audited financial markets, private banking and wealth management, specialist and consumer lending, and the controls against financial crime.
Executive Director, Group Internal Audit
At UBS, as Executive Director, he headed audit of the Credit Suisse UK investment banking entities, with responsibility delegated under the Chief Auditor, who was accountable to the regulators. At the same time, as Global Operations Manager, he was effectively chief operating officer and chief of staff for the audit of Non-Core and Legacy, the part of UBS winding down former Credit Suisse business. He oversaw its global audit plan, the divisional risk assessments and a team in several cities across the globe.
Global Head of Audit for Equities
At Credit Suisse he was a Director, leading audit of equities, equity derivatives and securities research across the global investment bank. He worked directly with the Global Head of Equities and the heads of individual trading desks, pivoting towards shorter, sharper reviews in real time, closer to management, with more timely opinions when the bank came under pressure. The equities business brought in two billion pounds a year in trading revenue. He led his team through the UBS takeover, spending time with them across several countries and being open with them about his own thinking.
Senior Internal Auditor
At Investec he audited specialist lending across the whole credit lifecycle. The lending covered yachts, supercars and aircraft, the funding of Premier League football transfers, road and rail projects in developing countries, windfarms, and property deals that each went to a bespoke credit committee. For anyone backing or overseeing a lender, he has tested credit decisions, and the due diligence behind them, in practice.
Internal Auditor
His career began at Santander, auditing market risk and bank reconciliations in the financial markets division. He also covered consumer finance through intermediaries, from the sale of a loan to the collection of the debt. In retail banking he managed branch audit teams and audited the anti-money laundering and financial crime controls.
Roles
Boards he chairs, sits on and advises
James sits on boards across business, the NHS and charities, as chair, non-executive director and trustee, and advises founder-led companies as they grow. His committee work runs well beyond audit, into finance and performance, people and culture, mental health legislation and investment. He takes on new work only where he can give it the time it needs.
Chair of the board
He chairs Nature Impact, a company that turns underproductive land into wildlife habitat and sells the biodiversity gains. He works with its founders on strategy and on the governance the company will need as it scales.
Non-executive director
He serves on the board of Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust, where he chairs the Finance, Planning and Performance Committee, and through that seat is a trustee of Headlight, its charity.
Board advisor
He advises the board of Footstep AI, a company whose search and rescue platform supports responders looking for missing people. His advice covers how the business is run, including how it governs its own use of artificial intelligence.
Strategic advisor
He is strategic advisor to Fallon AI, a consultancy that works with founders, boards and senior leaders on artificial intelligence. He acts as a sounding board to its founder on strategy, governance and client risk as the practice grows.
Trustee and non-executive director
He is a trustee and non-executive director of Missing People, the national charity that helps find people who go missing and gives them and their families free, confidential support. He sits on its finance committee.
Founding trustee and deputy chair
He is a founding trustee and deputy chair of The Start Line, which runs free walking and running programmes for refugee and asylum-seeking women in London. Before joining its board he advised its founder on legal structure, governance and early-stage fundraising.
Earlier seats
He sat on the audit and risk committee of a national grant-making charity as an independent member. He has also served as a trustee, a school governor and deputy chair of a London grant-making charity, where he chaired the investment committee.
Charity boards
Where his values took shape
Alongside his banking career James has run a second, unpaid one on charity boards and committees, and each has made him better at the other. His charity seats have run from a founding board to a national grant-making charity, and charities of every size in between.
Those boards taught him to earn influence without formal authority, and banking taught him rigour and how regulators think. He has drawn on both across sectors ever since. The charity boards shaped how he works. He starts from the people a decision lands on. Away from the boardroom, he is a search operations manager and search technician with London Search and Rescue, the volunteer team in the picture, helping the emergency services look for vulnerable people who have gone missing.
Working with James
Challenge people can act on
A board or business that brings James in gets independent challenge, given plainly to whoever needs to hear it. What turns it into change is how he raises each point, how he takes people with him and the support he gives them afterwards.
Standing up for what is right
When something is wrong he says so, even when it is hard. He raises it in the room where the decision is made, and brings the evidence with him.
Taking people with him
He listens to the case against a finding and recognises what is already working, and keeps at it until the people who have to change something can see why it matters.
Support alongside the challenge
He supports the people he challenges as firmly as he tests them, and stays with them while they put things right.
“In roles like Global Head of Audit or on a board as a NED, he adds sound judgment, independence and genuine strategic insight.”
~ NH
Managing Director, Investment Banking
Credentials
Qualifications
James is a qualified accountant and Chartered Internal Auditor who has built his career in internal audit, and his qualifications follow the same path. He also holds memberships that support his work with investors and with the leaders he mentors. His articles have been published by the Chartered Institute of Internal Auditors, the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.
Accountancy
Fellow, Association of Chartered Certified Accountants
Internal audit
Chartered Internal Auditor, Chartered Member of the Institute of Internal Auditors
Internal audit
Certified Internal Auditor, Institute of Internal Auditors
Internal audit
Qualification in Internal Audit Leadership, Institute of Internal Auditors
Financial Services
Chartered Member, Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment
Mentoring
Full Member, Association of Business Mentors
Academic
Master of Science in Management and Internal Audit, Cass Business School (now Bayes Business School)
Natural world
Fellow, Royal Geographical Society
The story behind the name
Struck by lightning, and still growing
Lightning Oak is named after a great oak tree on Terrace, which overlooks the rugby pitch in front of the chapel at Haileybury, the school James went to. Lightning struck it on the afternoon of 2 June 1898 and all but destroyed it.
It grew back, and more than a century later it is still standing. When James founded his own practice he named it after the tree, and for him it stands for facing adversity with strength, then rebuilding and growing until the challenge is overcome.
Talk to James
Chairs, nomination committees, founders and search partners can come to James about an appointment, investors and founders about a deal, families and owners about how a business they own or back is run, and audit committee chairs and executives about internal audit, risk and governance. The same goes for advisors with a client, any leader with a decision to test and organisers looking for a speaker. Every email, call and message reaches him personally.