Mark is one of the best-known mergers and acquisition specialists in the UK public relations and public affairs community and increasingly in the broader marketing communications sector.

In tandem with his business partners he has made over eighty successful business introductions ranging in size from large international consultancies down to very small specialist consultancies with as few as five staff employed.

The variety of deals undertaken has given him an unparalleled breathe of knowledge on deal structuring, exit planning and valuations. As a result Mark has developed a deep understanding of the companies and managers in the marketing communications industry, and has successfully delivered on a wide variety of transactions in his career.

He has executed transactions in Europe and the United States.

Directly prior to this he was involved, as a principal over fifteen years, in building , developing and selling a diversified services group whose businesses included an advertising agency, a conference company, a model agency, a secretarial recruitment agency and an accountancy recruitment agency. He has also been involved more recently in the music industry.

Previously he served in the Army having been commissioned into the Grenadier Guards.

Rupert qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Deloitte's before working in their corporate finance department, helping raise funding for SME's.

He entered the communications industry in the mid-1980s and developed Focus Communications, a financial public relations and investor relations consultancy.

Rupert led a management buy-out in 1996 of the remaining equity and subsequently sold the business to GCI, the PR arm of Grey Global Group in 1998. Rupert then established a global financial practice, GCI Financial, which he led until stepping down in 2001.

A former business partner of Mark Madsen , Rupert has worked over a hundred M&A transactions and flotations in his career, involving private and public companies. Since 2001, he has focused on strategic and mergers & acquisitions advice for creative service businesses and more recently through D5 Capital he raises capital for exciting growth companies and advises companies on refinancings and trade sales.

Mark Smith is a media and communications expert, and a qualified Chartered Accountant. Mark served as Chief Operating Officer and CFO of Chime Communications plc from 1994 to 2017. He is currently Non-Executive Chair of Holiday Extras, a major travel and leisure business which is privately owned, Non-Executive Chair of TPX Impact plc, an AIM listed company delivering digital transformation projects for clients mostly in the Public Sector and Non-Executive Chair of Merit Group PLC (formerly Dods) also an AIM listed Company providing political and business intelligence. He was previously Chair of The Unlimited Marketing Group a UK based private equity owned marketing services business before it was sold to Accenture in 2024.