LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Apr 16, 2025--
Acuity Knowledge Partners (Acuity), a leading provider of bespoke research, analytics, talent and technology solutions to the financial services industry, announced today the appointment of Kelvin Cheema as Managing Director, Global Transformation & Change and Interim Global Chief Information Officer.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250415520549/en/
Kelvin is tasked with driving technology leadership, an ambitious, company-wide digital transformation initiative that integrates cutting-edge technologies and data-driven decision-making processes across the organisation.
In this pivotal role, Kelvin will lead Acuity’s strategic technological advancement, ensuring seamless integration of technology, data and operations to enhance client outcomes and operational efficiency. His leadership is anticipated to be instrumental in leveraging artificial intelligence and automated solutions to refine business processes, and bolster risk management frameworks.
“Kelvin’s joining marks a significant evolution in our strategic direction,” remarked Ian Mullen, Chief Financial Officer, Acuity Knowledge Partners. “His deep expertise in orchestrating global transformations and his visionary approach are critical as we navigate through this era of digital acceleration. Acuity is at a critical juncture; our ability to harness data, insights, and automation will differentiate us and drive sustainable growth. We are confident that Kelvin’s leadership will be pivotal in fostering innovation and making informed, strategic decisions for our clients globally.”
Kelvin brings over two decades of experience in driving transformation across a spectrum of industries, including prominent stints at the Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, Kingfisher, Convatec Group, Heathrow Airport Holdings, Domino’s Pizza and the Big 4 management consulting firms. Kelvin is an alumnus of Oxford Business School and INSEAD.
“By consolidating our capabilities in IT, HR, M&A, Sales, Delivery, and all enablement supporting teams into a cohesive, insight-driven framework, we are positioning Acuity for sustained growth, agility, and impactful market presence,” stated Kelvin. “I am eager to advance our transformation agenda to further strengthen Acuity as the foremost data, analytics, and AI-led technology solution provider to global financial customers.”
In this new role, Kelvin will spearhead a global portfolio of enterprise-wide business and technology transformative initiatives, boosting data-driven intelligence, AI innovation and M&A integration.
About Acuity Knowledge Partners:
Acuity Knowledge Partners (Acuity) is a leading provider of bespoke research, data management, analytics, talent, and technology solutions to the financial services industry, including asset managers, corporate and investment banks, private equity and venture capital firms, hedge funds and consulting firms. Its global network of over 6,000 analysts and industry experts, combined with proprietary technology, supports more than 650 financial institutions and consulting companies to operate more efficiently and unlock their human capital and transforming operations. Acuity is headquartered in London and operates from 16 locations worldwide. Acuity was established as a separate business from Moody’s Corporation in 2019, following its acquisition by Equistone Partners Europe (Equistone). In January 2023, funds advised by global private equity firm Permira acquired a majority stake in the business from Equistone, which remains invested as a minority shareholder.
For further information, please visit www.acuitykp.com.
Kelvin Cheema, Managing Director, Global Transformation & Change and Interim Global CIO, Acuity Knowledge Partners
THIMISTER-CLERMONT, Belgium (AP) — The memory of blood dripping from trucks loaded with the mangled bodies of U.S. soldiers arriving at a nearby war cemetery straight from the battlefield in 1945 still gives 91-year-old Marcel Schmetz nightmares.
It also instilled a lifelong sense of gratitude for the young soldiers from the United States and around the world who gave their lives battling the armies of Adolf Hitler to end World War II in Europe.
Schmetz even built a museum at his home in the Belgian Ardennes to honor their sacrifice.
“If the Americans hadn’t come, we wouldn’t be here,” the Belgian retiree said.
That same spirit also pervades Normandy in northern France, where the allied forces landed on June 6, 1944, a day that became the tipping point of the war.
In Normandy, Marie-Pascale Legrand is still taking care of the ailing Charles Shay, a 100-year-old American who stormed the bloodied beaches on that fateful D-Day as a teenager and fought to help liberate Europe for many more months.
“Gratitude for me means that I am eternally indebted, because I can live free today,” Legrand said.
After D-Day, it would take almost another year of fierce fighting before Germany would finally surrender on May 8, 1945. Commemorations and festivities are planned for the 80th anniversary across much of the continent for what has become known as Victory in Europe Day, or V-E Day, one of the most momentous days on the continent in recent centuries.
Ever since, for generation upon generation in the nations west of the Iron Curtain that sliced Europe in two, it became a day to confirm and reconfirm what were long seen as the unbreakable bonds with the United States as both stood united against Soviet Eastern Europe.
No more.
Over the past several months, the rhetoric from Washington has become increasingly feisty.
The Trump administration has questioned the vestiges of the decades-old alliance and slapped trade sanctions on the 27-nation European Union and the United Kingdom. Trump has insisted that the EU trade bloc was there to “screw” the United States from the start.
The wartime allies are now involved in a trade war.
“After all that has happened, it is bound to leave scars,” said Hendrik Vos, European studies professor at Ghent University.
Yet deep in the green hills and Ardennes woods where the Battle of the Bulge was fought and Schmetz lives, just as along the windswept bluffs of Legrand's Normandy, the ties endure — isolated from the tremors of geopolitics.
“For all those that criticize the Americans, we can only say that for us, they were all good,” Schmetz said. “We should never forget that.”
After watching the horrors of the dead soldiers at the nearby Henri-Chapelle cemetery as an 11-year-old, Schmetz vowed he would do something in their honor and gathered war memorabilia.
A car mechanic with a big warehouse, he immediately started to turn it into the Remember Museum 39-45 once he retired more than three decades ago.
“I had to do something for those who died,” he said.
And for the treasure trove of military artifacts, what truly stands out is a long bench in the kitchen where U.S. veterans, their children, and even their grandchildren come and sit and talk about what happened, and the bonds uniting continent, memories all meticulously kept by his wife Mathilde, to pass on to new visitors and new generations of schoolkids.
In the coming weeks, she will be going out to put 696 roses on the graves of soldiers from the 1st Infantry Division — nicknamed “The Big Red One,” or “BRO” — who lie buried among 7,987 headstones at Henri Chapelle.
Charles Shay, who is now bedridden in Normandy, was also part of the 1st Infantry Division and came through the Ardennes region too before heading to Germany. He survived the Korean War too and started making visits to the D-Day beaches around two decades ago. Over the years, he became increasingly sick and Legrand, who has helped veterans in one way or another for more than 40 years, took him in to her home in 2018.
He has been living there ever since.
The moment everything changed for Legrand was listening to then U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1984 speaking on a Normandy bluff of the sacrifice and heroism of American soldiers.
Barely in her 20s, she realized that “their blood is in our soil and we have to show gratitude. We have to do something. I didn't know what at the time, but I knew I would do something to show it.”
She had long volunteered to help Allied veterans before she met Shay. He was lonely, sick and frail when she took him in and began caring for him at her Normandy home.
“It is a strong symbol, which takes on a new dimension in this day and age,” she said, referring to the tumultuous trans-Atlantic relations that have put the bonds between allies that Trump called “unbreakable” only six years ago, under extreme pressure.
Central in Trump's criticism of European NATO allies is that they have happily hunkered far too long under U.S. military supremacy since World War II and should start paying much more of their own way in the alliance. He has done so in such terms that many Europeans sincerely fear the breakup of the trans-Atlantic bonds that were a core of global politics for almost a century.
“The naive belief that the Americans will, by definition, always be an ally — once and for all, that is gone,” said Vos. It also raises a moral question for Europeans now.
“Are we doomed to be eternally grateful?” Vos asked.
FILE - Looking north from 44th Street, New York's Times Square is packed Monday, May 7, 1945, with crowds celebrating the news of Germany's unconditional surrender in World War II. (AP Photo/Tom Fitzsimmons, File)
World War II D-Day veteran and Penobscot Elder from Maine, Charles Norman Shay, center, and Marie Pacale Legrand during a D-Day 76th anniversary ceremony at the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandy, France, June 6, 2020. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)
FILE - An American soldier, identified as Patsy Caliendo, is laid to rest in the largest Allied military cemetery on the Western Front March 14, 1945, in Henri-Chapelle, Belgium. (AP Photo/William C. Allen, File)
Director of the WWII Remember Museum 1939-1945, Marcel Schmetz, stands near vintage WWII vehicles inside his museum in Thimister-Clermont, Belgium, April 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)
Gravestones of American WWII soldiers at the Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery in Henri Chapelle, Belgium, April 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)
