Howard Bilton is Chairman and founder of The Sovereign Group – one of the world’s largest privately owned consultancies specialising in the provision of offshore trusts and companies and associated international tax advice - www.SovereignGroup.com. He currently lives and works in Hong Kong.

Howard holds a joint honours BA degree in classics and law from the University of Keele and is qualified as a Barrister and called to the Bars of England/Wales and Gibraltar. He is a regular contributor of articles to The Telegraph and Financial Times. He is a visiting non-resident professor at Texas A and M University where he assists with their LLM and Masters degrees in International Tax and Offshore Centres. In 2003 he formed The Sovereign Art Foundation Limited which is a charity registered in Hong Kong, Singapore, Guernsey, South Africa and the UK. SAF has raised over US$9 million which has been used to help many thousands of disadvantaged children using art as a means of rehabilitation and education, www.SovereignArtFoundation.com. He is the principal of Hillvalley Limited which since 2005 has been making wine in Portugal which is sold throughout the world under the “Howard’s Folly” brand name, www.HowardsFollyWine.com

Laura Swale is a former UK secondary school art teacher and head of department of fifteen years. Following her relocation to Malta in 2017 Laura left her teaching career to become an entrepreneur. Her company Allura runs various projects and initiatives in the Arts and cultural sectors in Malta. For its work Allura received a Medal for Creativity from the World Intellectual Property Organisation and first prize in the creative category of the Malta Intellectual Property Awards 2019. In 2017 Allura was recognised with an award in the creative category of the Malta Innovation Awards and in 2018 made it the finals of the Social Impact Awards Malta.

Laura is also the Arts and Cultural Coordinator for the Times of Malta newspaper, for which she writes articles, features, interviews and reviews, coordinates contributing writers and manages content submissions. She is also a guest speaker at the University of Malta and on the judging panel of a number of art competitions.

Laura is a practising visual artist with a BA (Hons) in illustration and graphic design and a background in fine art, illustration, textiles, printmaking and digital art. Her creative portfolio can be viewed at www.lauraswale.com. Laura sells and exhibits her work and is regularly commissioned commercially. She also has gallery experience, organising various arts events and initiatives. She also speaks, pitches and presents at networking events and conferences. Laura’s company Allura runs The Trail, a walking tour of open art studios (www.allura.com.mt) and The Malta Arts and Culture Club (The MACC) cultural website (www.themacc.mt).