I started out at Deloitte in the audit team, where I spent five years – two of them post-qualification as a chartered accountant – before moving to Rolls-Royce, where I moved into a central accounting role. I was focused on statutory and management reporting for the corporate function initially, but the role gave me my first insight into treasury, because the treasury profit and loss and balance sheet were consolidated into Rolls-Royce’s corporate HQ reports. I then moved into a financial controller role, looking after around 20 small sales offices around the world and the Rolls-Royce expat population.
After a while, the role of treasury controller came up and seemed a natural fit. I had been at the company for just over three years when I moved into the treasury team, which at Rolls-Royce is quite large – around 20 people. Rolls-Royce has a huge hedging programme – one of the largest from a corporate perspective. Added to that, there was a lot of senior-level involvement and interest in treasury.
From that treasury controller role, I moved into an assistant treasurer role, taking on responsibility for the trade finance team as well as the treasury control team. Then, just under three years ago, the opportunity to join IHG as group treasurer came up.
The majority of the Rolls-Royce operations in the UK and the corporate HQ are based in Derby, and the finance department is centralised there. From a cultural point of view, I’d moved from a professional services environment at Deloitte, where everyone is a young professional, to – firstly – a team of three. Two members of that team had been at Rolls-Royce for 40 years and even the team member closest to me in age had been at the company for 10 years. Needless to say, I had to adapt to working in a different environment quite quickly. Rolls-Royce was being hailed as a great example of British engineering at the time, but it was to go through quite a lot of challenges from a product and trading perspective. There was also of course the well-publicised Serious Fraud Office investigation. From a career point of view, it was a tough time. The level of work around funding and credit ratings certainly escalated, for instance. But the treasury and central finance teams were great to work within.
After a time, I felt I was due for a move. A move internally would probably have led back into mainstream finance. Looking externally for opportunities, treasury was the obvious step. I had achieved my AMCT quite quickly after moving into that first treasury role at Rolls-Royce, and I had gained a broad experience of most areas of treasury. I had the responsibility for the implementation of a large cash-management project soon after I joined the team, and I also had significant involvement in developing treasury policies and assisting with some of the funding activities. I had also been a trustee on one of the main pension schemes at Rolls-Royce, a £2bn defined benefit scheme. However, I had been keeping an eye on opportunities externally and the group treasurer position at IHG came up at the right time.
I had five interviews for the role at IHG, which was quite stressful, but also quite a positive experience. I felt that if they put that much effort into the recruitment process then this was a company and role to take seriously. And it was a different culture once again. The culture of the hospitality sector does permeate the whole business. A lot of senior people in the business started their careers in hotels and they have that people-oriented ethos. Company HR literature includes pictures of people doing what they like to do outside work. To see all that immediately gave me a sense of how much of a ‘people business’ IHG is. Most striking was the friendliness of the people. When I joined, I would receive emails from people all over the world. You don’t ever feel like you can’t talk to people. People want to talk to you and they want to support you.
In a new role, that was a huge help. In my previous roles and from a central corporate finance perspective, I had worked my way up. I had that base knowledge around systems and relationships. People knew I was capable and trusted me. But in a new environment, nobody knows you and you have to build all of that senior sponsorship from scratch. The culture at IHG made that easier.
That first move into treasury: the roles I had been doing up until then had been challenging in their own right. But coming into such a specific area, and having the opportunity to study for the AMCT and develop my treasury knowledge, opened up a whole new world. It also taught me to focus on the economics and not the accounting. Rolls-Royce is well known for not using hedge accounting: it does what is right for the business, and it was interesting to see how the group treasurer and senior management talked about and dealt with those kinds of issues.
Every role I’ve had has given me something different – some have been more focused on technical skills, some on leadership and some a combination of both. For example, the first thing I had to do in my second job at Rolls-Royce as financial controller was tell the whole team it was at risk, while moving the jobs and responsibilities to the shared service centre locally. This was part of the overarching financial plan to centralise as much as possible and was a huge and stressful undertaking. It felt terrible at the time. But I look at it and realise what it taught me. In the end, most team members were redeployed or had roles in the shared service centre, but keeping them engaged under those conditions was a challenge.
As group treasurer, I obviously have wider responsibilities than I did previously – the IHG treasury is relatively smaller and more straightforward than at Rolls-Royce, but that has given me the opportunity to get involved in other areas as well. I also have teams spread over three locations, two in the UK and one in the US, so that has added a different dimension as well.
Recently, I’ve taken on a wider role, having been appointed as one of IHG’s global process optimisation leaders – or GPOLs – for all group cash and treasury processes. This includes reviewing the full end-to-end cash process from daily cash management, payments, receivables, bank connectivity, inter-company payments and the usual treasury cash activities. The point of the GPOLs is to aid collaboration across teams for all the main finance processes. It has kicked off this year, and the initial projects we are working on might run for two to three years, but the long-term purpose is to create a culture of continuous improvement.
I have also taken on additional responsibility for the team that manages the group capital expenditure approval process and long-term cash-flow forecasting, which has provided me with a great opportunity to understand our business in even more depth.
I enjoy the variety of day-to-day treasury work, including more significant items like a bond issue or getting into the detail of a process as part of the GPOL work. And then treasury itself is constantly changing – whether it’s regulation, bank products or technology, which means we have to keep up-to-date with what is happening and think about the short-, medium- and longer-term impacts and opportunities of those changes. I don’t think you get that in most finance roles. Treasury is relatively unique in providing all of that exposure within a small team.
I really love working for this company and it has been a great move. I love travel too. It’s one of my passions so it’s exciting to be part of this industry.
Being able to build strong relationships internally is really important, so that people understand what value you can add and feel free to reach out and ask you questions, so that you can help them or provide a slightly different perspective on a range of issues.
Being able to build those relationships externally is crucial, too, to make sure we are focused on mutually beneficial activities with our banks and other providers.
An ability to see the bigger picture at a high level is important, but when you work in a small team, you also have to be willing to get into the details sometimes to make things happen.