Tibra is a successful quantitative trading firm that operates globally. I am based in the Sydney head-office and am responsible for overseeing the global Financial Control function, which covers the full range of consolidated financial accounting, management accounting, forecasting, management and statutory reporting, treasury and AP functions, both for Australia and the other operations globally. I took over the team after a turbulent period, and have built a successful and stable team.

Macquarie is a large, diverse banking and financial services group with a peerless reputation. Working in a business partner capacity to the IT team, I supported a member of the global c-suite with his budgeting, forecasting and financial management.

IMC is a world leading high frequency trader and market maker, using cutting-edge technology to trade on a wide variety of financial markets in a large number of financial products. It is a fast-paced, innovative environment, wherein every team contains smart, motivated people delivering exceptional results.I initially worked on the Finance side of the team in a broad role covering all aspects of the function. During this time, I was able to improve the efficiency of the team through process improvement and automation, mainly using Excel and VBA macros. I also lead a project to analyse GST reporting which resulted in the company reclaiming a seven figure sum of unclaimed input GST.After a year, I was asked to move my focus to the Middle Office function, which has a much bigger systems and IT requirement due to the volume of data involved. This role has involved programming in Qlikview, SQL and Python, and to calculating the revenue of the financial products we trade (Options, Futures, Warrants, Equities & ETFs). In this role on my own initiative I have been able to drastically improve reporting, enabling management and traders to access and analyse a wide variety of information on an automated daily online report, normally produced for the previous day’s P&L before the markets open.

FirstRand Bank is the second largest bank in South Africa, and the UK operation performs group treasury functions, fixed income product trading, corporate advisory services and other investment banking operations. Heading up the UK Management Accounting function and reporting to the London Branch CFO, my duties included:• Production of monthly Management Accounts and oversight of all associated processes – accruals, provisions, prepayments, fixed assets, variance analysis, reconciliations, key risk indicators and control of expense authorisation and bank payments.• Responsibility to drive constant improvement in reporting.• Management of annual budget cycle using Oracle Hyperion Planning.• Management of 2 staff members – a Management Accountant and a Purchase Ledger Clerk.• Liaison with department heads to improve understanding of financial aspects of the business.Key Achievements• Finance lead for successful implementation of Oracle EBS R12.• Drastic improvement in effectiveness of ABC model through process improvements and discussions with senior management to remove unnecessary complexity – thus freeing the department to focus on interpreting performance of businesses rather than producing inscrutable numbers.• Implementation of i3BAR methodology to produce impressive interactive reports using Excel, gaining much favourable feedback from corporate headquarters in South Africa.• Selection for management development scheme and successful completion of the one year programme.• Successful organisation of ledgers having inherited a TB with many issues, and implementation of effective controls to maintain accuracy.

Fuerst Day Lawson is a global supplier of food ingredients and industrial chemicals. It trades in commodities, manufactures ingredients and performs research and development into flavour compounds on behalf of customers. The company uses mark-to-market accounting to value stock and currency positions across many commodity markets, and performs FX hedging in many currencies to manage global transactional risk, so the accounting environment is complex and provides many challenges.Reporting to the Group Management Accountant, my dual roles have been firstly to produce monthly management accounts and perform accounting functions, and secondly to develop management information and to partner non financial company members.

I started the business with 2 partners to operate healthy fast food restaurants. We succeeded in introducing our innovative, healthy food product into a highly competitive local market in Leeds, and we opened a second location (in Reading) in July 2005. As well as the general management I took personal control of all finance functions for the business, and discovered I had the ability and interest to succeed in this area.I taught myself to produce the Management accounts, and devised all the financial management systems, including an automated cashing out procedure using Visual Basic Macros to control and monitor the till outputs. I also learned a lot about the management of people – the company employed 25 people at its peak, and we created an environment of teamwork and rewarded good performance resulting in an exceptionally low staff turnover and the development of several staff members from servers into shop managers.Along with my partners, I wrote the business plans, raised finance from banks and business angels, planned and executed 2 shop fits, and eventually sold the operation in early 2009.

Marcol is a property investment and development company. Reporting to the Financial Controller, I:Prepared management and statutory accounts, including balance sheets, profit and loss statements, schedules to calculate accruals and prepayments, and other backing schedules.Produced completion reports and journals after property sales, and thus determined profits and performance from investments.Prepared and devised management reports (using Visual Basic in Excel), including weekly cash balance and forecast report (reduced the time taken to produce this report from 5 hours to 2 hours by writing a macro to automatically process the data from the accounts package). Other reports included JV partner profit distribution schedules and group cashflow forecasts.Performed quarterly VAT calculations and produced returns.Performed bank reconciliations, journals, payroll and other bookkeeping tasks.

Rubric is a small but international linguistic company, whose principle focus is on the localisation (translation) of software and websites. I had a full-time role at Rubric while my business was running:Managing teams of people on multiple projects.Performing financial management of, and reporting on projects. Ensuring the delivery of a high quality product to demanding deadlines and budgets.Practicing clear communication, stringent planning and excellent organisational skills.I left Rubric because I decided to pursue a career as an accountant. I spent the intervening time between then and joining Marcol preparing my business for sale.

Taking part in the IBM graduate scheme, I was able to perform several roles, consulting for different organisations on long term projects including: team leader on a hardware audit project, business analysis, project office management, project administration and accounting.I left IBM after completing all graduate training in order to work on my own business start-up.