Latest news with #MBE
Business Wire
3 hours ago
- Business
- Business Wire
Michael Taets Joins Academy Securities as Managing Director, Head of Corporate Finance
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Academy Securities, the nation's first Post-9/11 veteran owned and operated investment bank, today announced the addition of Michael Taets as Managing Director, Head of Corporate Finance. "I'm excited to help clients navigate today's financial and geopolitical complexity with strategic, solutions-oriented advice.' Michael Taets joins the Academy team with significant experience in treasury and capital markets, having served in senior leadership roles at major financial institutions. Most recently, he was Senior Vice President and Treasurer at Worldpay. Prior to Worldpay, he held critical positions at GE Capital as Deputy Treasurer of Global Funding & Exposure Management and Managing Director of Asset/Liability Management. His career also includes nearly two decades at Freddie Mac, where he advanced to VP of Asset/Liability Management and Senior Portfolio Manager, overseeing extensive financial portfolios and risk management operations. Prior to his career in finance, he served as an enlisted soldier in the United States Army National Guard. 'Michael brings a wealth of experience and exceptional leadership skills to Academy,' said Academy's Chairman and CEO Chance Mims. 'His deep knowledge of capital markets and balance sheet management will be instrumental in supporting our continued growth and success.' Mr. Taets commented on joining the firm: 'It's an honor to join a mission-driven firm like Academy Securities, where service, integrity, and purpose are at the core of everything we do. I'm excited to help clients navigate today's financial and geopolitical complexity with strategic, solutions-oriented advice.' Mr. Taets holds a B.S. in Finance from Illinois State University and an MBA from The George Washington University School of Business. He is also a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) charterholder and volunteers on the Board of Trustees of the Westport Weston Family YMCA, underscoring his dedication to leadership both professionally and within the community. 'We are very pleased to have Michael joining Academy," said Academy's Vice Chairman Phil McConkey. "His expertise and proven ability to lead complex financial operations will undoubtedly add tremendous value to our team and our clients." About Academy Securities Academy Securities is a FINRA registered Broker Dealer and a preeminent veteran owned investment bank with strengths in capital markets, asset management, public finance, geopolitical intel, fixed income, and equity trading. Leadership and staff have had intensive military training prior to entering and gaining in-depth financial services experience in global capital markets. We are mission driven with a high ethical code, a solid sense of accountability and strive for excellence in the pursuit of our clients' success. Academy is our nation's first post-9/11 veteran owned and operated investment bank and is certified as a DVBE, SDVOB, and MBE. The firm has a strong top and middle tier client base served by a national platform with offices in New York, Chicago, San Diego, Chapel Hill, Louisville, Austin, Dallas, Sacramento, and West Palm Beach. Information about Academy Securities is available at
BBC News
9 hours ago
- BBC News
Anthony Walker: 'I will never escape grief over son's murder'
Twenty years on from the killing of her son in a racist attack, the heart-wrenching pain of losing him is never-ending for the mother of Anthony Walker. Anthony, 18, was chased from a bus stop in Huyton, Merseyside, before being attacked with an ice axe and left to die at a park was a murder that sparked widespread revulsion and the months after her son's killing, Dr Gee Walker spoke openly about the agonising grief which she said felt as "if someone had stuck a knife in you". Exactly two decades after his murder, on 30 July 2005, the pain remains every bit as acute as it did on that day. "Now I feel as if I've been stitched... back together - but the pain's still there," says Dr Walker. "I've got so many scars. [The grief] seems like it's never-ending because it's just on a loop."It goes round and round - no matter how much we try to get away from it, we can't." Anthony was in the second year of his A-levels when he was Paul Taylor and Michael Barton, who were aged 20 and 17 at the time, were later convicted of his was jailed for life with a minimum term of 23 years and eight months, while Barton - the brother of ex-footballer Joey Barton - was jailed for 17 years and eight months in December Walker previously revealed how Taylor had tried to make contact with her – but she had not been ready to meet him at the time."I'm here if he wants to," she says now, "but my children and family are really against it". "They actually say: 'once a liar, they will always be a liar'. They say I might not get what I'm looking for - the truth."But to me, they [Taylor and Barton] were the last ones who'd seen my son alive, so I'd really like to ask them what happened, and why did you do it to my son?"I still feel as if for me, as a mum, I would like to know."Maybe it would help me to find out where this hate came from - because it's got to come from somewhere."So I was hoping I would get some answers." While her grief remains a stark reality, Dr Walker takes some comfort from the outpouring of support and love she received in the wake of Anthony's death – in particular from the people of Liverpool."I don't know how to thank the people of Liverpool," she says."Someone asked me the other day - 'do you think the response to Anthony being killed would have been the same if it was anywhere else?' and, without a breath, I said, 'Liverpool people, they are a special breed'."I'm so thankful for the support that keeps us upright today."Dr Walker, who was made an MBE for services to diversity and racial injustice in 2024, has devoted her life to tackling racism in her son's memory. The Anthony Walker Foundation was set up to tackle racism, hate crime and discrimination, by providing educational opportunities and victim support services, while promoting equality and inclusion for all."I'll be walking down the street and people [will say] 'thank you Mrs Walker - you don't know me, but I know you. Thank you for what you're doing for my child,'" she serves as her son's legacy, but also as a reminder of what his life could have been."Can you imagine - if Anthony has done so much in death, how much, had he lived, he would have done in life?" she can watch the interview with Dr Walker on BBC North West Tonight at 18:30 BST or on BBC iPlayer on Wednesday 30 July 2025. Listen to the best of BBC Radio Merseyside on Sounds and follow BBC Merseyside on Facebook, X, and Instagram. You can also send story ideas via Whatsapp to 0808 100 2230.
Times
10 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Times
Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years review — a master rights some wrongs
Andy Goldsworthy is imaginative, inventive, poetic, hard-working, big-hearted and brave. He has been making art for 50 years. Nature loves him, people who have seen his work in books love him, people who go to his exhibitions love him, I love him, my wife loves him, and so do my kids. But for reasons we need to go into, the art establishment does not. Indeed, it ignores him. He has never been nominated for the Turner prize. He's not in the Royal Academy. He hasn't received an MBE or an OBE, let alone been knighted or damed like the Gormleys, Kapoors or Emins. He has never had a show at the Tate or the Hayward. No one has asked him to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale. For 50 years Goldsworthy has been making art that touches the heart and delights the eye. But the art establishment can't see it. Why? One reason is that his work is centred on the landscape, and the art establishment, these days, is an urban beast. Sheep don't fret about their identities. Trees don't remember the empire. Farmers don't express themselves with their clothing as relentlessly as Leigh Bowery did, night after night, club after club, in the posthumous show he had recently at Tate Modern. Another problem is the delightful nature of Goldsworthy's art: that it is so easy to love. The gorgeous patterns he finds in autumn leaves, the magical moments he creates with nature's simplest materials, the ecstatic understanding he has of the joy of colour are not neurotic enough to appeal to the art world's tastes. It sees itself as a complex ally of the ego, not a joyous buddy of the id. It hungers for difficulty, rigour, unpleasure. So my advice to the commissars of the art establishment, to Tate directors and Serpentine curators, is to get yourselves to Edinburgh and visit Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years at the Royal Scottish Academy. It's a look at the whole of his lengthy career, but also a statement show that seems determined to stamp out the rumour that he's a softie. The real Andy Goldsworthy — hardcore, thoughtful, mysterious — is being encouraged to emerge. It begins spectacularly with a long and shaggy sheepskin rug running down the centre of the posh stairs that welcome us to the Royal Scottish Academy. Infused with the stony rigour of the Scottish Enlightenment, carved out of local granite, the posh stairs speak of privilege and rank, politeness and empire. Goldsworthy's rug, meanwhile, ascending shaggily step by step, speaks of muddy fields and the dirty bottoms of sheep. Two worlds are colliding, and societal sparks are flying. The attack continues with the next sight, a filigree of delicate lines stretching between the portentous Doric columns that loom over the entrance. What is it? A silk hanging? A beaded embroidery? As you get closer, you finally recognise it: barbed wire. From many fields and with many patinas. For the first time in its unpleasant history, the vicious outdoor fencing has been woven by an industrious spider into a curtain of fragile beauty. • Like nature itself, the show keeps switching moods. Gravestones, a lumpy gallery full of rocks that appear to have emerged from beneath the floor, like the biblical prophecy about the resurrection of the dead at the End of Days, is doomy and gothic. It's made out of stones dug up in the cemeteries of Dumfries and Galloway. But Sheep Paintings, two panels of cosmic swirlings with a perfect circle at their centre, feels druidically mystical, like that installation with the setting sun at Tate Modern by Olafur Eliasson. Goldsworthy's solar discs were actually created by the muddy feet of sheep feeding around a perfectly circular food trough. In his student days Goldsworthy worked on a farm, where he learnt a respect for labour and inherited an appreciation for the seasons. Despite their many moods, his installations are invariably centred on a simple piece of geometry: a circle, a square, a line. Oak Passage seems, from its first angle, to be an impenetrable tangle of branches. But as you walk round you see that its centre is dissected by a miraculously straight path. Man and nature are doing their thing in evident harmony. Most readers will know Goldsworthy's work from the sumptuous photography books he produced in the 1990s. They were popular and are, I suspect, the chief reason the art world took against him: it dislikes crowd-pleasers. Some of those images are on show here as well — a mysterious zigzag in the earth created with the feathers of a heron; a bottomless hole in a tree fashioned from autumn leaves. Rather than shining glossily in a coffee table book, they hang coolly on the gallery walls, part of a thoughtful photographic encapsulation in which the rigour that went into their production is easier to note. They remain beautiful — what a nose he has for the intensity of nature's colours — but their ambition to record a fleeting moment is much more evident. The job of this gorgeous photography is to record a natural performance that would otherwise be lost. All through the event there's a feeling that the artist is trying to right some wrongs: a sense of correction. Here, finally, the truth is being projected that he is, at heart, a minimalist: a lover of geometry's simplest order. But where most minimalists are urbanites, searching for industrial precision with industrial materials, he's a rural minimalist who finds order and simplicity in nature. If it's not there, he inserts it into the chaos. And like all great landscape artists — and he's certainly one of those — he's bringing the outdoors indoors. It's a traditional British ambition. It deserves far greater recognition that it has hitherto received.
South Wales Argus
2 days ago
- Sport
- South Wales Argus
Ebbw Vale: plans for statue of Steve Jones lodged
Alyson Tippings of Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council's environment and regeneration department has applied to place the 2.85-metre-high statue at Ebbw Vale Sports Centre on Lime Avenue. Destination manager Ms Tipping explained that talks had been held between her department, the Sports Centre and other groups with an interest in the project. Ms Tipping said: 'The project is being delivered by a group that includes local authority staff, Aneurin Leisure staff, local councillors and a representative of the group who fundraised for the project. 'Steve Jones and his family have been involved in the selection of the design.' They selected a proposal by artist Tim Ward for the sculpture. The sculpture is to be a silhouette running figure mounted on a locally quarried limestone boulder. The total height of the proposal will be 3.4 metres and will be 'created' in 10mm marine grade 316 stainless steel, laser cut to shape with laser etched text in Welsh and English. The figure will be 2.85 metres high with a width of 1.5 metres and shows Steve Jones wearing the number 10 breaking the world record in 1984 when winning the Chicago Marathon. The steelwork will be securely fixed by resin fixed into a base on a boulder. A decision on the application is expected by September 2. Olympian and former marathon world record holder Mr Jones was awarded Blaenau Gwent's highest honour when councillors voted unanimously to award him the freedom of the county borough at a meeting in January. In April, Mr Jones joined councillors and guests online from his home in Boulder, Colorado in United States of America at an extraordinary council meeting where he received the honour.. The mover to award Mr Jones the freedom of Blaenau Gwent started last year when the council were asked by Lee Aherne chairman of Parc Bryn Bach running club, if anything would be done to commemorate the 40th anniversary of his world record run at the Chicago marathon. This feat took place on October 21, 1984. He held the marathon record for a British runner for 33 years until Mo Farah broke it in 2018. At the meeting Mr Aherne said: 'I was very luck in the 1980s to have stood on the starting lines when Steve was the best marathon runner in the world.' 'You are a bona fide legend.' Mr Jones told councillors 'You can't believe how honoured I feel to be accepting this award. 'Ebbw Vale is where I started running, my roots and family are still in Ebbw Vale. 'All the other things I have done in my life, even receiving my MBE from Princess Anne may stand second to this honour.'
Telegraph
2 days ago
- Business
- Telegraph
‘I'm a scam expert but my mum still ended up on the suckers list'
Have your parents been the victim of a scam? Get in touch at money@ It was how tiny her usually indomitable mum looked when she revealed she had been a victim of a bank impersonation scam that still troubles Louise Baxter. The visible fragility as Linda, 76, got upset over the £6,450 she had nearly lost. 'She was ashen,' recalls Baxter, 45. 'And she looked small. She said to me, 'I feel like a vulnerable old lady.' I was like, 'Mum, you're not a vulnerable lady, you're a victim.' But it was really upsetting to see her like that because my mum is so fierce.' She adds: 'I felt terribly upset she had been manipulated by somebody and I hadn't been able to protect her. And I also felt a bit helpless.' Her description echoes the emotions of so many children of older scam victims, only with an extra note of self-recrimination: Baxter is the head of the National Trading Standards scams team. It's a team she set up in 2012 following a career with Trading Standards, and Baxter was awarded an MBE for her invaluable work in 2017. Yet even she couldn't stop her own mum from getting scammed. Baxter acknowledges it is difficult to admit her own mother has become a scam victim – not only once, but on two subsequent occasions, which she goes on to discuss. She alludes to the jibes she expects this interview to elicit. 'I don't doubt people are going to put some horrible things in the comments – 'Oh, why was she so stupid – she's running the national scams team',' she says. It's an attitude towards victims that she's keen to turn around. 'I think Mum was worried about telling me because of what I do,' she admits. Linda only revealed the bank scam to Baxter the day after she had clocked her mistake while speaking to another family member, who suggested she call up the bank. 'She was shaking, and she kept saying, 'I'm stupid.' And I said 'you're not stupid.' I get up on stages and shout about the fact we have to change the language; we have to provide permission for victims to come forward because nobody reports this as a crime because of the blame and shame element.' The art of the scam Baxter explains she has always talked openly about scams with her widowed mum, a retired town clerk who lives in Eastbourne, East Sussex. She views her as fully clued up. 'She's amazing, very switched on. She tells me how to manage my money; she helps friends who are less computer savvy,' she says. But Linda became ill with Covid in January 2024 and more isolated, and that affected her ability to process information and make decisions. She clicked on a scam social media advert to buy a scented candle and afterwards received genuine communication from her bank saying there had been attempted fraudulent activity on her credit card. This communication meant that when the impersonation scam happened later, her defences were down. Linda received a text one evening asking her to call her bank urgently to avert fraud and to respond using the telephone number given. A 'polite' chap called Simon took her account and bank log-in details and finally reassured her it was sorted. Within the hour a £6,000 loan was taken out on her account, and a further £450 was withdrawn to buy Royal Mint coins. Luckily, the loan withdrawal was stopped just in time. Afterwards, Baxter spoke to her mother regularly about potentially suspicious texts, emails or calls, as Linda began receiving more of them. Baxter explains that once you respond to one scam, you land on what criminals call the 'suckers list' and are targeted more. 'If you don't respond, you drop off the list,' she explains. Linda continued to ignore the scam communications until a couple of months ago, when she again bought items from adverts on Facebook, this time for the garden. She received a thank you note from the company but the items, costing £48, never arrived. The messages started up again. Recently, she was caught off-guard and responded to a text stating she had a parking fine. She clicked on the link, which took her to a legitimate-looking government website, and entered her contact details, only stopping and calling her daughter before giving her bank details. 'She said, 'I've done something silly',' Baxter recalls. She says it's a terrible feeling – that people are 'watching' her mum. 'I can't be with her all of the time,' she says. She explains even the least vulnerable older person becomes so the more they are targeted. 'There's potential for more susceptibility because there's more chance you might respond,' she says. Once a person has become a victim, they often lose confidence, too. 'The wellbeing and mental health effects are quite catastrophic, so it can sometimes catapult people into more vulnerability,' she says. She adds a staggering statistic: 'If you're elderly and a victim of a scam, you're two-and-a-half times more likely to die or go into residential care in the next 12 months.' Family rifts caused by scammers Baxter is no stranger to distressed families and, despite reiterating that anyone can become a victim, still cannot quite believe she is now one of those family members. 'There's a whole load of emotions I've dealt with (in families): frustration, desperation, the fact you haven't been able to protect them,' she says. 'A lot of shame as well. Why did I not notice? We should have visited more. And it can tear families apart. I've seen where criminals have isolated people and turned them away from their families.' This is particularly true of investment or romance scams. Baxter knows families unable to ever heal rifts. 'The criminals have said 'you can't talk about any of this because they're going to be jealous', or 'they want your money for inheritance',' she says. She describes scammers as groomers. 'They might phone on a daily basis, and so if a victim says 'my daughter says this is a scam' they'll say, 'I told you they were going to say that.'' The families won't be able to get through. 'Sometimes that could be because of cognitive decline, or because they've been coerced, controlled and emotionally manipulated to the nth degree, or it could be that there was a broken relationship before, so the criminals will hang on that,' she adds. Baxter gives broad advice to anyone trying to help a family member who has been scammed. 'The first thing is communication,' she says. 'The more people share the fact they've been a victim, the more it gives permission for others to share.' That is why Linda wanted her to speak. She also emphasises the importance of the right reaction you give a parent or grandparent. 'It's listening with empathy and no judgement. That first conversation is the most important, so they feel they can talk to you about it.' Baxter stresses the importance of simply asking a family member if they're not sure about a purchase, or a message, or any other form of communication – and to 'pause'. 'Nothing is that urgent. Criminals rely on pushing us into what's called a 'hot state' when our decision-making processes are impaired,' she says. She just wishes Linda had called when 'Simon's' text first landed. Scamming methods to beware of Lottery and clairvoyant letter scams These were rife when Baxter started working with Trading Standards 20 years ago, yet she explains they still are today. A lottery scam will suggest a big win if the recipient responds with an admin fee – but will also stress 'you mustn't tell anyone', explains Baxter. A clairvoyant letter scam, meanwhile, will often appear to be in handwriting, repeatedly use the recipient's name, and claim a clairvoyant has seen 'money on the recipient's cards'. It will ask them to respond with money for their prediction or may even threaten them if they do not 'cross their palm with silver'. These, says Baxter, are often the scams that victims don't reveal out of shame. 'Everybody's very focused on AI and the deepfake stuff,' she says, 'but in my world victims do tend to be over 70, and the old scam methods are still working.' Impersonation scams As Linda experienced, impersonation scams can be fake messages and calls from a bank, while it's also common for scammers to pretend to be the police or the NHS. And, while landlines are most prevalently used, mobiles are also targeted. 'The police one can sometimes be 'your bank account has been compromised, you need to go and get all your money out, and we're going to send a courier to collect it',' explains Baxter. A call pertaining to being from the NHS might not feel financially threatening at all, but it's no less damaging. 'It could just be someone pretending to speak from the NHS to get your personal information, to get sensitive medical history so later they could target you,' she says. Telephone scams More broadly, telephone scams can encompass any hot topic that scammers pick. Recently, calls selling roof insulation have been frequent. Baxter also lists a range of home goods and technology scams. 'We see 'you need to protect your washing machine and fridge freezer' and offers of an insurance-backed guarantee. Fake white goods protection policies will take a direct debit of £20 from your account each month. Older people might not access online banking and check their direct debits,' she says. Then there is the call claiming your computer has been compromised. 'They'll say 'we're from Microsoft, we just need to help you to block it.' They'll get you on to your computer and give you some code that gives them access so they can scrape it.' She adds: 'Victims have even been offered a call-blocking subscription to protect their phone from criminals.' Romance and 'pig butchering' fraud Baxter explains that victims of romance scams tend to be in their 50s and upwards, with the scams becoming more prevalent as people try online dating in older age. 'People are in an online relationship with somebody, and then that person needs money for plane tickets, hospital bills, or house maintenance', she says. She warns that romance scams can also evolve into a scam termed 'pig butchering'. This is when the victim is encouraged to make increasing financial contributions, usually in the form of cryptocurrency. 'The scammer will say something like, 'oh my God, I've had such a great day, I've just invested in this amazing scheme, it's going to make me millions of pounds.' And they talk about that a lot, and the victim will say, 'I've got £500 I can spare on that' – so you invite yourself in.' The 'butchering' later becomes apparent when the funds invested and the returns never appear. 'Hi Mum, it's me' texts These aren't new but are still prevalent, warns Baxter. In the form of a text, the victim will receive a natural-sounding message purporting to be from their son or daughter needing financial help. 'It'll often start with 'Hi Mum, my phone just broke, so can you delete the number and save this one?'' says Baxter. The conversation will continue depending on how the victim responds. ''I lost my phone' or 'I haven't got my bank account set up yet', or something like that. 'You couldn't just send £500 to my account?' and they'll send some details.'
