After more than sixty years as a partner, Neil Benson, our Chairman, retired from practice at the end of March 2024.
Neil joined LG as a qualified chartered accountant, quickly became partner and served as Senior Partner for decades and most recently acted as our Chairman, bringing stability and consistency to the practice. With a level of dedication that is rarely seen in today’s business environment, Neil’s tenure underpinned the firm and remains our foundation today.
With longstanding and high-profile clients, often across the generations of a single family, Neil’s strong relationships have led to him becoming close friends with many that he advises and he will remain a trusted friend to them after his retirement. Although his support had a different flavour for each generation of a client’s family, they would all admire his commerciality, business insight and attentiveness. Unbiased and fiercely independent, Neil’s view of practice life was that every client is important, and equally so. He only had one quality standard and it was the highest possible service level. Like so many of his guiding principles, this is embedded in the way the practice operates today. A successful strategy, it is one of the reasons that the firm has doubled in size three times over during his tenure, growing from a small, young, local Marylebone practice to the full-service mid-tier advisory, accounting and tax business of today with a nationwide and international outlook.
Away from Lewis Golden, Neil also served on the board of several public companies, acting as Chairman for three PLCs and sitting as a non-executive director of a fourth. He was also published in the accounting press, on business and financial management matters.
Outside of his practice work, Neil was honoured in 2004 for services to charity where his involvement has included the Foundation for Liver Research, The Cystic Fibrosis Research Trust, The Saints and Sinners Trust and the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Countless office functions, board meetings, client lunches and trustee meetings have been enhanced with a tale or two from Neil’s vast catalogue of stories. Whether they were about the business news of the day, his sporting passions of golf, cricket and real tennis, all of which he enjoyed playing and watching over the years, or just a new anecdote.
Neil will be sorely missed at the firm, as will the sight of his pride and joy the pristine 1965 Alvis which so often attracted admiring glances from passers-by outside our Queen Anne Street office. We wish Neil and his wife Ann, every happiness in retirement.