About SDWH

What SDWH does

SDWH Limited is a consulting practice founded by Matthew Rees. It provides independent, objective research, analysis and briefing to organisations operating at the intersection of business, finance and government.

SDWH also provides analytical briefing to parliamentary committees and their research staff, and to audit and accountability institutions in other countries examining comparable questions.

Governments regularly undertake transactions and decisions, including asset sales, major procurements, infrastructure financing and governance reforms, that carry significant financial risks and opportunities. These decisions require a combination of commercial acumen, financial literacy and an understanding of public sector accountability that is difficult to find in a single source. Whether you are seeking to make the case for bold value-orientated policy decisions, evaluating the optimal strategy, or reviewing past performance, SDWH provides independent analytical insight to support that process. For companies scaling in sectors where government is simultaneously a major customer, investor and regulator, SDWH provides the same independent perspective from the other side: analytical context to understand the systems they are navigating and what the accountability and regulatory frameworks governing government behaviour require of them.

The analytical approach treats accountability and governance processes as economic systems with measurable efficiency characteristics, identifying where institutional capacity and policy response cycles are structurally suboptimal and where the evidence supports practical improvement.

Accreditations

SDWH Limited holds the following certifications and public sector supplier positions.

The SDWH difference

Most analytical input comes from one direction: investment banks, management consultancies, or the civil service. SDWH brings all three perspectives simultaneously. Most scrutiny is backward looking, and can result in risk aversion. SDWH is forward looking, with a proven track record in generating high impact returns on investment for delivery teams.

• Independent.No commercial interest in the outcome. No mandate to sell a product. Objective assessment of what the evidence shows.
• Forward-looking.Not a review of what went wrong, but a clear view of what should happen next and why it will generate impact.
• Grounded in evidence.Every assessment draws on direct experience of how government has handled comparable decisions, what has worked, and what the data shows.
• Impact-generative.A programme of 15 reports led by Matthew Rees has been independently validated as generating £1.7bn of financial impact, representing a ~250:1 return on the cost of the work. That figure includes £1,372m attributed to the UK Guarantees Scheme for Infrastructure (NAO Annual Report 2024–25) and £332m from asset sales reports including the Privatisation of Royal Mail and the Sale of Eurostar (NAO Annual Report 2021–22).

Matthew Rees

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Matthew Rees has spent his career working at the boundary of government and markets. He holds a BSc in Economics from the London School of Economics and has applied that analytical foundation across a career spanning investment banking, competition casework, regulatory design and public audit. Throughout his appointments including the Competition Commission, National Audit Office and the Single Source Regulations Office, he has delivered regulatory and data services to balance the interests of government and commercial counterparties, and led major examinations of how government invests for growth, supports companies to safeguard public interests, raises money from asset sales and privatisations, how it spends money through procurement, manages supply chains, and how it finances infrastructure investment.

Earlier career experience includes five years as financial and business adviser to statutory decision-making panels at the Competition Commission, advising on mergers, market investigations and regulatory economics appeals across infrastructure, financial services and technology sectors. That work involved substantive analysis of competition, market design, cost of capital and structural remedies, including leading the remedies implementation process following the BAA airports market investigation. He has direct experience as an investment banking professional of valuations, M&A, privatisations, competitive auctions, special administration processes, infrastructure guarantees, defence contracting regimes, procurement frameworks and governance arrangements across central government and economic regulators.

SDWH Limited is the vehicle through which that experience is made available to organisations who need it. SDWH Limited provides research, independent analysis and briefing that helps organisations understand how government has approached comparable decisions, what the evidence shows about what works, and what questions they should be asking. SDWH Limited does not lead transactions, does not provide regulated financial advice and does not provide statutory audit services.

What does SDWH stand for?

SDWH Limited provides decision intelligence at the interface of public value and private capital. Think about us like your favourite SanDWicH!