The corporate finance community stalwart - still going at 57

How a comic interlude helped Jim Whittaker survive Enron, recessions, and the great Leeds exodus

Hello Rainmakers,

As a veteran of the Yorkshire corporate finance community Jim Whittaker has survived recessions, market scandals and high-profile corporate collapses. As Whittaker nears three decades in the industry, Sheryl Moore caught up with him to ask what’s next for one of the region’s longest serving rainmakers.

“If someone had told me I’d still be working in corporate finance at 57, I’d have never believed them!” says Jim Whittaker whose near 30-year career makes him one of the longest serving rainmakers in Yorkshire.

“Back then you’d have been hard pressed to come across anyone over the age of 45. I saw it as a young man’s game and, at some point, I’d have to bow out gracefully never to be seen again.”

But bow out Whittaker has not. As head of Grant Thornton’s corporate finance team Yorkshire and the North East, Whittaker is as busy as ever. He credits running around 20 miles a week to keep up with the gruelling long hours needed to get deals over the line. Alongside his “obsession” with running, Whittaker is an avid illustrator and once had his own adult comic magazine called Poot – more of which later!

Yet for this stalwart of the Yorkshire deals community – whose longevity in the region is matched by only a handful of others including Roger Esler at Dow Schofield Watts, Dave Irwin at Sentio and Dan Renton at Park Place – corporate finance wasn’t first choice of career.