John has played a number of roles in Scottish business during his career, first as a solicitor advising on an M&A transaction in 1984. At Christian Salvesen he built on his initial remit as in house counsel to leading a team which managed all group legal matters; major HR disputes; the group property portfolio; all substantial commercial contracts; all business investment and divestment activity; and major banking transactions

During his time at Salvesen he ran 63 acquisitions and disposals and played a major role in the demerger of Aggreko from Salvesen.

At Bank of Scotland he was involved in strategic planning and various transactions including the sale of an investment management business and a major work out in the shipping division. Work on the management of investments in private companies and advisory work on mergers and acquisitions continued at Noble Grossart.

All of this experience has been put to good use at Archangels where John is responsible for leading investments of around £10million per annum in young Scottish companies. The companies are all in the high tech sector with a bias towards life sciences. He has also managed two recent exits - Mpathy Medical Devices and Lab901 and is looking at further opportunities to realise value. Archangels is probably the biggest life sciences investor in Scotland having led investments of over £80million in 14 life sciences investments of which 3 have floated and 2, as noted, recently sold to trade buyers.

Throughout this period he has kept abreast of developments in the market having given numerous presentations Archangels work and angeling generally;  participating in relevant discussion groups and conferences; and having engaged with, advised and consulted with numerous government bodies including the Scottish Government; Scottish Enterprise; The Scottish Investment Bank; The Treasury; B.I.S; HMRC; and Capital for Enterprise. The aim is to maximise the benefit to the economy of seed capital investment, entrepreneurialism and relevant government and fiscal support.

John also sits on the Scottish Government Public Procurement Reform Board, chaired by John Swinney, the Advisory Boards of the Amadeus and Angels Seed Fund and Seraphim Capital (both public/ private seed capital investment funds) and the Board of Northern 3 VCT PLC, a venture capital trust.