Meet our leaders

Chief Executive Officer 12 January 2026

Ian joins SMS with significant experience in the energy transition and electricity network sectors, most recently serving as CEO of Electricity North West, where he led the business through a period of accelerated growth.

Previous roles also include senior leadership positions at UK Power Networks, Navigant and EY, with a track record of delivering business growth and innovative joint ventures across the energy system.

August 2025

Sean brings more than two decades of senior financial leadership across the infrastructure, real estate, and investment sectors. Most recently, he served as Chief Financial Officer at Arqiva, where he led the company’s strategy, finance, and procurement functions. During his tenure, Sean oversaw a period of organisational transformation, including the disposal of its mobile towers business and the sale of a majority ownership stake in the group.

Earlier in his career, he held senior treasury roles as Director of Treasury at Intermediate Capital Group and Group Treasurer at Land Securities, developing deep expertise in corporate finance, capital markets, and strategic financial management. He has also served for nearly a decade as a Non-Executive Director and Chair of the Audit & Risk Committee at the Sovereign Network Group, contributing to governance and financial oversight at Board level.

December 2024

Neil is an experienced General Counsel with over a decade’s experience working at senior levels within companies operating in the industrial engineering and financial services industries.

Prior to joining the Company, Chris spent seven years at David Brown Santasalo providing leadership of the group’s Legal & Compliance team.

12 January 2026

A Chartered Director, Tim has over 20 years’ experience in the energy and utility industry across utility connections, smart metering, data and energy services. Tim was previously part of the UPL business (acquired by SMS in 2014) almost from its inception and, prior to taking up his role as Chief Executive Officer (from 2022 to 2026), he served as Managing Director of SMS’s asset management, data and energy management businesses.

Tim has expert knowledge of electricity and gas smart metering, having been responsible for setting up UPL’s electricity metering business following deregulation in 2004.

April 2024

Andrew Furze joined KKR in 2021 and is Managing Director in the Infrastructure team. Prior to joining KKR, Mr. Furze spent fourteen years at Macquarie, where he was a managing director focused on the European infrastructure sector.

He holds a BSc. in Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science and an MSc. in Finance from INSEAD.

April 2024

Yimei Luo joined KKR in 2016 and is Director on the Infrastructure team, focusing on investments across Europe, Middle East and Africa. She also spent four years of her tenure at KKR in Singapore and Hong Kong, covering infrastructure sectors in the APAC region.

Prior to joining KKR, Ms. Luo was with UBS in London focusing on M&A and financing transactions in the energy and infrastructure sectors. She began her career on the corporate development team with Total SA, the French oil and gas major.

Ms. Luo holds degrees from Peking University and ESSEC Business School.

April 2024

Aadhaar Mehra joined KKR in 2019 and is a Principal in the Infrastructure team. Prior to joining KKR, Mr. Mehra was a member of the investment banking division at Morgan Stanley, focusing on M&A and financing transactions in the transportation and infrastructure sectors.

Mr. Mehra holds a Bachelor of Science with Honors in Economics from the University of Warwick.

March 2025

With over 25 years of leadership experience across energy, utilities and financial services, Chris has an outstanding track record in leading large-scale operational transformation, driving commercial performance, and delivering excellent service for customers.

He joins SMS group from M&G plc, where he served as Chief Transformation Officer, playing a central role in delivering the company’s enterprise-wide technology and transformation agenda. Prior to that, Chris spent nearly 15 years at npower, where he held a series of senior positions including Chief Operating Officer, Director of Customer Service & Sales, and Director of Smart Metering.

November 2025

Benjamin is a senior leader with extensive experience across the global energy and utilities sector. He previously served as Strategy and Growth Director at Electricity North West and was a Partner in Guidehouse’s Energy, Sustainability and Infrastructure practice.

March 2022

Judy joined the business in 2019, her remit includes leading the people strategy and driving the culture, whilst ensuring that employee engagement, well-being, development, transformational change, and equality, diversity and inclusion are paramount. In addition, leading communications across the group. Judy’s HR experience of more than 20 years includes having chartered fellow membership of the CIPD and being a trained workplace mediator, and spans across the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors including the manufacturing, construction and financial services industries within the UK, Ireland, Germany and internationally.

External appointments
Judy currently holds a long-term Non-Executive Director (Trustee) position with a charitable group.

February 2022

Mark has over 25 years’ experience across technology architecture, IT operations, software engineering, change management and enterprise transformation, including large scale digital transformation. His experience has been gained across a number of sectors, including financial services, manufacturing, sales and distribution, as well as in the public sector. Prior to joining SMS in February 2022, Mark spent five years as CTO defining and then delivering the digital strategy at Hodge Bank, before which he was Chief Architect and Head of Technology at the DVLA.