Take a Moment with Matthew Gambold FCA

This month we were delighted to Take a Moment with Club member Matthew Gambold FCA, avid Swansea City supporter, and Commercial Director of the massively successful ChadSan, a full service accountancy practice with offices in London, Bristol, Essex, and of course, Guildford.

Matthew co-founded the business, with fellow Director Edward Sanford a little over thirteen years ago, and together the pair have overseen a steady growth in numbers, to the very impressive 40+ team that they employ today.

Having achieved a first class honours degree in Management & Logistics from Cranfield University, Matthew began his working life as a trainee chartered accountant at a small, but well-respected practice in his home town of Swansea, before moving on to become Financial Controller at Eurostar.

But it wasn’t long before the bright lights of Guildford beckoned, and in 2011, Matthew set up ChadSan alongside Edward.

At this point in our chat, Matthew very kindly reminded us that he will be offering the opportunity on Thursday 18th July for County Club members to sit down with himself and other experts from his team to talk through any aspect of personal or professional tax and finance that they may want some guidance on.  Please do contact the club for more details or to pre-book a session.

Back to Matthew, and more specifically his passion for the place of his birth, Swansea, or Abertawe for the Welsh speakers among you, and the rollercoaster ride that comes with following the fluctuating fortunes of the City’s football club.

We asked Matthew for his fondest memories of his beloved club;

‘I miss our old ground the Vetch but at a capacity of 12,000 we needed a move to a bigger stadium at the end of a season that saw us promoted to the league 1 before  an eventual rise to the Premier league in 2011.

My greatest Swansea memory has to be the play off final win at Wembley (I was there!) that saw us promoted to the Premier League, but it was all the more sweet having also been at the Vetch less than a decade earlier, in 2003 to see a James Thomas hat-trick in the final game of the season against Hull, which avoided us being relegated from League 2 and dropping out of the professional leagues altogether.’

Matthew makes no secret of his love of his home City, but does not regret the move to Guildford;

I met my future wife Caroline in 2008, and we decided to move to Guildford in 2011 to be near to family as we looked to start our own, (our daughter Imogen was born in 2012).

Personally, having grown up on a farm in Wales I was delighted to be so much closer to such incredible countryside and fresh air whilst still being just a 35 minute train ride away from London.  I still feel very close to Swansea and have lots of friends back there but our life and family are here now and a few years back, we even persuaded my mum to relocate to Cranleigh.

Matthew is proud of his continuing association with Pond Meadow Academy, an outstanding academy in north Guildford, for children from 3-19 with a range of severe and complex learning disabilities and profound and multiple learning disabilities including complex medical needs. For more than ten years, Matthew was a trustee of the academy, and he remains a member to this day.

Finally, we asked Matthew for his thoughts about The County Club, and he was delighted to give us a few words based on his seven years as a member.

‘As a firm we make regular use of the meeting rooms, for training days, and board meetings and the entire team enjoys the excellent facilities and great location.

As an individual who is a great believer in community I’m very proud to be part of a club that has served the local community so well and for so long and I was exceptionally honoured to be asked to stand as a director earlier this year.

I’ve made far more use of my membership over the past year and although I still don’t find the time to visit as much as I would like, when I do it is always a hugely positive experience.  The food and service is top notch (hats off to Julian and his team) and it’s a really comfortable and relaxing environment to socialise or just to unwind after a hard day at work.

I’m extremely keen to help the club broaden its appeal to small businesses and young professionals in the area and to help encourage more passive members to make better use of the incredible facilities they have access to.’

Thank you Matthew, it has been a pleasure to spend a moment with you, and to share a brief insight into your business and personal achievements with our members.