on assignment, Yangon

on assignment, Yangon

Who we are

We are a team of experienced professionals, rigorously focused on the information needs of our clients.

Our co-founders have worked in the industry since the 1980s. Each member of the team is a practitioner, deeply involved in casework. Our staff are drawn from a variety of sectors: they have backgrounds in law, finance, diplomacy, headhunting, journalism and consulting. Each brings their own experience and their own network of sources to the firm. They speak Arabic, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, French, German and a host of other languages. Uniting them is a common set of skills – attention to detail, the ability to master a brief, and an explicit focus on what information is most relevant to our clients.

Our senior team

Amy Lashinsky

CEO and Co-Founder

Amy Lashinsky is CEO and co-founder of Alaco.  She trained on Wall Street as a securities analyst. She joined Kroll in New York in 1988, moving to London to help establish its first overseas office, where she became Managing Director of its business intelligence unit. In 1995 she set up her own business intelligence firm with Ambrose Carey, which they sold in 1998 to NYSE-listed Armor Holdings, remaining there until founding Alaco in 2002.

Amy is an Independent Non-Executive Director of FTSE 250 company Energean Oil & Gas plc. She is also a Trustee of the Rathbones Folio Prize. Amy graduated from the University of Michigan.

Ambrose Carey

Co-Founder, Director

Ambrose Carey co-founded Alaco.  His clients include banks, corporations, law firms and private investors, with whom he works on a full range of issues, from due diligence to fraud investigations.  Over the course of a 25-year career in business intelligence, he has been involved in some of the most high profile asset tracing cases of the past few decades.  He has particular experience in the Middle East, travelling frequently to the Gulf and Saudi Arabia.  He also works closely with a number of private banks in Switzerland.

Ambrose began his career in Saudi Arabia, before entering the business intelligence industry in 1987.  He set up his first company with Amy Lashinsky in 1995, which led to Alaco’s formation in 2002.  He has a degree from the University of East Anglia.

Oliver Gorton

Director

Oliver Gorton joined Alaco in 2006 and co-heads our Transactions Advisory Practice.  He works with clients across a broad range of due diligence and litigation support investigations in both developed and emerging markets.  He has extensive experience of pre-transaction due diligence, managing longstanding relationships with leading investment banks, supporting their capital markets, M&A and private banking teams.  He has led many multi-jurisdictional dispute-related assignments for in-house counsel, involving asset tracing and fraud investigations.  His broad international footprint includes regular work in Russia and the CIS, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, Europe and the Far East.  He speaks Spanish and French.

Prior to Alaco, Oliver worked for twelve years in client-facing research roles, firstly at a major international headhunting firm and then for a specialist research consultancy.  He has a degree in Modern Languages from the University of Cambridge.

Nikos Asimakopoulos

Director, Disputes

Nikos Asimakopoulos joined Alaco in 2008.  He focuses on dispute-related assignments on behalf of law firms and their clients, working internationally.  He has developed specific expertise in the extractive industries, particularly in Russia, Central Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.  Nikos holds a BSc and an MSc in Economics from the universities of York and Bath, respectively.  He speaks Greek and Russian.

Lindsay Hufton

Director of Operations

Lindsay Hufton joined Alaco in 2013, having previously worked in management consultancy and for a leading investment bank.  She manages due diligence projects and investigations around the world predominantly for financial sector clients, whilst also overseeing Alaco's internal resourcing and operations.  Lindsay received a first class BA and an MSc in Biochemistry from St John’s College, Cambridge, and an MA in International Relations from the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University.  She speaks Russian.

Gordon Rainey

Managing Director

Gordon is Managing Director at Alaco and co-heads our Transactions Advisory practice.  His work cuts across a variety of sectors and disciplines, with an emphasis on transactional and strategic intelligence mandates for corporate clients and both public and private investors.  He also has managed a broad range of dispute-related assignments, typically in conjunction with outside counsel.  On both transactional and contentious matters, Gordon has travelled extensively throughout the developed and emerging economies of Europe, Russia/CIS, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Gordon began his career practicing corporate law in New York and London with a leading Wall Street firm.  He holds a Juris Doctorate from the University of Virginia School of Law and is a licensed attorney in the State of New York.

Richard Ankerson

Associate Director

Richard joined Alaco in 2011. He has managed a range of complex corporate investigations, pre-transaction business intelligence assignments and litigation support cases, and other projects in the spaces where these intersect, often with a focus on countries in Latin America, where he has a strong understanding of investment and political issues. Prior to joining Alaco, Richard spent a year at an asset management firm in the City. He holds a MA in Religious Studies from Edinburgh University and speaks Spanish.

Nicolae Reutoi

Associate Director

Nicolae Reutoi joined Alaco in 2014.  His portfolio of work includes complex litigation support investigations and asset recovery assignments.  Nicolae is regularly engaged in managing projects in the broader FSU region, including Russia, Ukraine and Central Asia, and he also oversees Alaco’s work in Romania and Moldova, where he has particular expertise.  He holds an MA in International Relations from King’s College London and a BSc in Business and Russian from Trinity College Dublin.

Jonny Melliss

Associate Director

Jonny joined Alaco in 2013.  He has worked on a range of pre-transaction due diligence assignments and complex investigations across the CIS, Eastern Europe and Africa.  Before joining Alaco, Jonny worked in recruitment and investor relations.  He holds an MA from the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies and a BA in Modern and Medieval Languages from the University of Cambridge.  He speaks French, Russian, Ukrainian and conversational Greek.

Daniel Vassall-Adams

Client Services Director, Switzerland

Daniel joined Alaco Suisse in 2021 as Client Services Director, based in Switzerland.  Daniel serves as first point of contact for many of Alaco’s existing and prospective clients in Switzerland and the wider DACH region.  He has experience liaising with financial institutions, corporations, law firms and international organisations across all of Alaco’s services.  Previously, Daniel was a Director of an international risk consultancy, based in Switzerland.  He lives in Zurich.

Earlier on in his career, Daniel worked in financial services and headhunting.  He holds a Bachelor’s degree in History from the University of Bristol.  Daniel is also an Executive Committee Member of the Women’s Brain Project, a non-profit organization.

Heiner Weber

Director, Alaco Suisse

Heiner started his career in financial derivatives.  He co-founded and headed a pan-European options market-making firm, before going on to senior Wealth Management positions at UBS (desk head, UHNW); Lombard Odier (Managing Director); Falcon Private Bank (market head and branch manager).  He has advised clients such as Eurovegas, UBS-O'Connor, Derivatives Trading Corp (DeTraCo).

Heiner has attained CAIA, PRM and CQF qualifications, is an alumni of IMD (Lausanne) and IE Business School (Madrid) and studied robotics at the Federal Polytechnic Institute.

Robert Heuchling

Director of Investigations

Robert Heuchling joined Alaco in 2023 as Director of Investigations, based in Chicago.  He works with both Alaco’s disputes and transactions practices, utilizing his expertise to develop and enhance investigations.  He has nearly 20 years of service in the US government, most recently with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  He spent 13 years in the FBI, finishing as the supervisory special agent overseeing a squad investigating international corruption, including violations of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), sanctions, foreign bribery and corruption, international money laundering and anti-trust cases. 

He led some of the FBI’s largest and most successful FCPA/kleptocracy investigations, during which he developed close working relationships with law enforcement and anti-corruption authorities from around the world.  His international experience included cases in Europe, Africa, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia.  He attended Northwestern University on a Naval ROTC scholarship and graduated with a BS in Journalism.