Huawei has filled out the ranks of its UK Advisory Board with a peer, an IT industry veteran and a non-exec with a finger in quite a few pies.

The sleeping Chinese giant – in the European enterprise market anyway – planted former UK Trade and Investment mandarin Sir Andrew Cahn at the head of the panel earlier this year.

Now he'll be joined by Baroness Wheatcroft, Brian McBride – former Amazon.co.uk boss who resigned last month but remains on the board at Computacenter – and Claudia Arney, non-exec director at five firms including Transport for London, Halfords and Which?

The motley crew will advise Huawei on "localisation", said Victor Zhang, CEO of the UK operation.

Huawei is building its enterprise biz in Europe and has already bagged some well-known industry figures – including former Sun UK director Simon Culmer, ex-HP channel boss David Poskett and Dominique Vanhamme, who led Cisco Europe's channel.

The firm is assembling a channel programme for resellers, and signed distribution deals with Micro P and as exclusively revealed by El Reg, Tech Data. ®