Chris Brannigan
Senior AssociateChris Brannigan is a strategy consultant with significant experience in leading, supporting and directing diverse organisations in difficult situations. He is a partner in a number of strategic consultancies offering Board level counsel and bespoke political interpretation and policy advice.
He was a member of the No. 10 Policy Unit for Prime Minister Boris Johnson, with responsibility for Defence and established the Integrated Review Task Force, focusing on British foreign policy out to 2030. He previously served in 10 Downing Street as Director of Government Relations for Prime Minister Theresa May.
He has recently completed a role as Chief Executive Officer of a United Kingdom-wide trade body and has led a number of London-based, client-focused, international-reach businesses. He is a former military officer, with extensive combat experience in British military operations in recent decades and is also a Senior Fellow at Policy Exchange.
He was educated at Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, holds an MA from Kings College, London, and completed the Joint Services Advanced Command and Staff Course.
Neil Brown
Senior AssociateNeil Brown has been a Geopolitical Strategist at CQS since 2016. His role was established to inform trading and investment strategy in a period dominated by the emergence of populism and the return of great power politics. Neil leverages an extensive global network developed over seven years at CQS, and before that a full career in the Royal Navy.
His Naval career included operational deployments in three air defence destroyers and logistics command of a Carrier Task Group; legal roles as a Court Room Advocate and Judge, and as senior UK military lawyer for the 2003 invasion of Iraq and UK global military operations in 2004. He later led the Navy’s Legal Services and the Naval Staff. His last role was in the Cabinet Office, developing a British national strategy for engagement with Gulf Cooperation Council States.
Neil graduated from Queen’s University Belfast in Law, was commissioned into the Royal Navy at the Britannia Royal Naval College, called to the Bar at the Middle Temple, and was a Visiting Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford University.