Innovation Funding Experts

Dominick Peasley, CA

Chief Executive Officer

Dominick is CEO of SPRK Capital. Prior to joining SPRK he was responsible for all lending capital at Funding Circle, the largest platform lender to small businesses in the UK. He joined pre-IPO to institutionalise their capital base and during his tenure there raised over £5bn of new capital to support SMEs in the UK. He was instrumental in the UK Government loan schemes, through CBILS, BBLS and most recently the RLS programme.

Before that, Dominick co-founded Capital-B a FinTech advisory and capital placement agency focused on developing lending businesses. Prior to this Dominick worked for Goldman Sachs where he headed distribution for its asset management business in the UK and with global banks. Dominick qualified as a chartered accountant with PwC and is a Fellow of the ICAEW. He holds a Masters in Engineering from Durham University.

Kyp Andronicou

Head of Operations

Kyp has over 12 years’ experience in financial services with a focus on SME lending and FinTech platform operations. He joined from Funding Circle where he was most recently Head of Investor Services for UK & Europe having held positions including Operations Manager for Capital Markets. Prior to this Kyp held similar roles at Goldman Sachs in both Investor Services and Derivative Operations having obtained a first-class degree in Economics.

James Adkin

Business Development Director

James has more than 25 years’ experience in financial services with a focus on equity and debt markets. He previously worked at Barclay Capital, Bank of America and Lehman Brothers where he held a number of UK and international roles. James holds a degree in Economics and Geography from UCL.

Jasdeep Hara

Head of Underwriting

Jas has over 20 years of experience in financial services with a focus on SME underwriting. He joins from AskIf where he was instrumental in designing the underwriting and monitoring policies for their lending operations. Jas held similar roles at Relendex and worked with the founding team of Sprk at Funding Circle where he helped implement their underwriting policies, joining in 2012 as one of the first employees. Prior to this, he held positions at Euler Hermes and ING in commercial underwriting.

Ivan Ananjev

Head of Technology Development

Ivan has more than 15 years’ experience in complex software development. He joins from Willis Towers Watson where he led the development team on their Gateway Platform. Prior to this Ivan was one of the early technology development team at Hometrack part of Zoopla, the UK’s leading property search and valuation company.

Mia Roberts

Business Development Associate (Grants)

Mia joined our graduate programme in 2023. Having successfully built her first business during lockdown, gaining 1000s of social media followers, Mia is focussed on the expansion of Sprk’s innovation grant lending strategy.

Tony Brennan

Founder & Chairman

Tony is a Chartered Accountant with a career of more than 40 years and was previously a tax partner in an Australian accounting firm. Tony has played a leading role in a range of stock exchange listed companies, including Managing Director and Chairman of numerous Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) and London Stock Exchange (LSE) listed companies.

Tony was the founding Chairman and major shareholder of Radium Capital, the leader in Australia’s R&D lending sector until selling the company in December 2019 to the US fund that has provided Radium all its lending capital.

Simon Champ

Non Executive Director

Simon is the CEO and a partner at Newstead Capital, managing investment portfolios for institutional and supranational entities.

Prior to joining Newstead, Simon was a founding partner of MW Eaglewood Europe LLP, now part of Pollen Street Capital. During his tenure there he raised £870m of capital for P2P Global Investment Plc. Before that, Simon was a Director of Equity Sales and Equity Capital Markets at Dresdner Kleinwort, J.P. Morgan Cazenove and most recently Liberum. As a founder and former board Director of Liberum, Simon was part of a number of transactions in the equity space and has advised many new technology companies in equity and debt raisings.

David Brennan

Non Executive Director

David was the co-founder of Radium Capital which is currently the largest R&D loan business in Australia. Following its scale-up, David also oversaw its subsequent sale in 2019. He founded Enably, Australia’s first fully automated online lending platform offering personal loans through a digital experience.

David also founded Kikka Capital an online lending platform offering small businesses lines of credit to run and grow their business. Kikka was subsequently floated on the stock exchange. In 2015 David was announced as the AICM WA Young Credit Professional of the year and nominated for the 40 under 40 award.

Elaine Villamayor

Senior Underwriter

Elaine joined Sprk having spend over 10 years at Funding Circle in a variety of roles across underwriting and credit, most recently as the Head of Credit Quality.  Prior to this she was at Euler Hermes and RBS.  Elaine holds a degree in Finance and Law from LSE.