Corporate Governance
Alan Roper
Managing Director
With a National Diploma from Pershore College of Horticulture, Alan joined Blue Diamond as the Company's Retail Director in 1999 when turnover was only £6m.
In 2007 Alan was promoted to Managing Director of the Group. Alan masterminded the development of Bridgford Garden Centre, Nottingham, which is widely regarded as one of the best garden centres in the country.
Today, Blue Diamond turns over more than £300m per annum.
Watch: Alan's 20 Years of Service Video
Neil McDonald
Finance Director
Neil has a degree in accounting and is a qualified accountant (FCMA/CGMA). He has been operating in the retail sector since 2006 and joined the board of Blue Diamond in 2024 as the group finance director and company secretary.
Prior to joining Blue Diamond Neil spent nearly two decades at Asda, rising through the ranks to become Senior Finance Director, partnering with board-level executives across Retail, Logistics, Online, and Merchandising. Known for his ability to deliver results, Neil has led large, high-performing teams and driven major transformation programmes, improved customer experience, and operational efficiencies across multibillion-pound portfolios.
Neil thrives in fast-paced, complex environments and is passionate about talent development, business partnering, and value creation through strategic finance leadership.
Simon Burke
Chairman
Simon Burke is an experienced retail and consumer executive and has managed some of the best-known retail names in the UK.
He trained as a chartered accountant before joining Virgin, where he held various positions, including Chief Executive Officer of Virgin Retail, Virgin Cinemas, and Virgin Entertainment Group, a £1bn worldwide business.
He has been Chairman or Chief Executive Officer of retail brands such as Hamleys, Majestic Wine, Superquinn, the iconic Irish supermarket chain, Hobbycraft and Bathstore.com, as well as Mitchells & Butlers, the FTSE 250 pub and restaurant business. Several of these businesses were turned around and in some cases sold at strong premiums.
More recently he has had non-executive appointments including SID at the BBC, chair of tech start-up Eagle Eye Solutions and Audit chair at the Co-op. Simon is currently Chairman of Bakkavor the FTSE 250 food producer, Blue Diamond, the No 1 UK garden centre retailer, and of The Light Cinema Group.
Don Williams
Non-Executive Director
Don has spent his career in professional services and focused on the retail sector.
He retired from KPMG in April 2025 having spent 10 years driving growth in the retail sector across all KPMG capabilities. When he left this was a £130m+ business. He spent his time with management teams and owners understanding their key current challenges and opportunities before introducing-delivering appropriate support, advice and experience to help them meet and overcome those challenges and opportunities. His primary focus has been on founder owned or private equity backed retailers in the fashion, footwear, lifestyle, homewares and health and beauty sectors. He also has experience of the listed environment.
He started his career as a trainee accountant at BDO progressing to audit partner and was with the firm for 25 years. In his time there alongside his work with clients, he also led a combined audit and tax business group in London (circa £20m revenues), developed a firmwide sector led approach across all service lines, led and developed the firm's alumni programme and was an elected member of the firm's partnership council (a representative body with responsibility for oversight of management). For the last 5 years he was national head of the retail and wholesale sector developing initiatives such as the High Street Sales Tracker (a weekly sharing of like 4 like sales by over 80 mid-market retail companies) and the FD Forum ( a networking and learning "club" with over 300 retail FD's as members).
He is a keen sportsman having had the privilege of playing hockey for Great Britain and England including participation at 1992 Barcelona Olympics and winning over 120 caps. He has also consulted within sport including facilitating the development of the Framework agreement which governs how the 4 home nations operate together to provide their athletes the best opportunity for Olympic success as part of Team GB.
David Ummels
Non-Executive Director
David is a multicultural entrepreneur whose background is in investment management, capital markets and debt restructuring. Over the last 25 years, he has built a strong network of relationships with many institutional investors and corporations. He has accumulated a substantial knowledge of different legal environments and international corporate governance standards.
He has sat on several public and private company boards, including an investment vehicle that held an extensive portfolio of "trophy" assets in the fields of real estate and luxury car manufacturing, a large central and eastern European real estate company and a London based investment manager. David has extensive experience working on audit, remuneration and risk committees. He is a passionate art collector and a big fan of and advocates for Guernsey, where he settled in 2015 with his family. David is a member of the Council of the Chamber of Commerce, their Cultural Ambassador and head of the creative sector. He is also the founder of Art for Guernsey, an entrepreneurial and innovative art-related charitable initiative.
Susie Crowder
Non-Executive Director
Susie is a Business Advisory Director of Grant Thornton. With over 20 years experience, Susie has worked in leadership roles in Guernsey for the past 17 years in a variety of private sector organisations specialising in strategic HR, change management, and business improvement.
She has held a number of non-executive posts including that of UBS and the largest technology business C5, as well as founding the educational Charity, Bright Futures LBG.