Ed Hunter Email & Phone Number

LEH Investments Pty Ltd is a small private family company which provides senior accounting, financial management and financial systems IT management services. Our clientele has included and/or currently includes Alcoa Australia, Coles Myer, National Australia Bank, Axa, Transition Group and Beyond Sportswear International. Big or small, we are happy to assist you if we can.

Providing services to the new joint owners of the company, Transition Group, to review accounting for a number of trusts and corporate trustees associated with the former sole owners of the company, draft 2009 financial accounts for those entities and ensure that all financial accounting is brought up to date.Extensive discussions with MYOB have been required to successfully resolve problems created by running an old, unsupported version of their accounting software, then load the software and restore data from a backup file. I strongly recommend MYOB to anyone for their excellent products, technical support and customer service.

Providing services to consolidated group in preparation of statutory accounts and doing a degree of general accounting as part of this, due to expansion of group and need to integrate new businesses.

Primarily engaged to prepare a financial systems development program, further requested to prepare interim report for the ASX, then retained to prepare annual report. During this period, I also provided general accounting and financial management services.

Following my work on Axa's IT outsourcing project, I was asked to provide financial expertise to assist Axa IT Finance and Account Management to manage the outsourced mainframe printing operations. This entailed monthly financial analysis and a detailed audit after two years.The audit uncovered various over-charging and I assisted Axa IT Account Management in negotiations with the vendor to recover $1 million in same.Overall, outsourcing of mainframe printing resulted in a saving of $3.5 million over the initial 5 year contract.Subsequently provided further services when a contract extension was being negotiated on conclusion of the initial five year term. Further savings of $500k per annum were expected to be achieved for the subsequent 3 year term.

Initially engaged in Axa IT to assist Arthur Andersen to complete a project to achieve savings on GST through structuring of its IT division as a separate arms-length company to obtain GST credits on IT charges. The project realised savings in excess of $1 million per annum.Subsequently retained to manage an IT Chargeback project to improve the financial aspect of IT resource allocation and achieve greater financial efficiency throughout the company. The outcome was a saving of $1.4 million per annum from a cost base of $10 million.In December 2001, I became the finance manager of a major IT outsourcing project. My responsibilities encompassed preparing all financial forecasts, liasing with Axa Global IT managers in New York and undertaking financial analysis of tenders submitted for parts of the company's IT operations being outsourced to third parties.

Huon was a start-up company established to acquire automotive component manufacturing operations from Nylex. I was initially asked to provide advice on setting up IT network communications following the separation of these businesses from Nylex. Huon's Managing Director subsequently asked me to act as their part-time IT Manager. This primarily involved establishing the IT structure and strategy of the new company. I contracted Ridley Technology Group to carry out the detailed work as the expertise did not exist within Huon (Nylex IT was a centralised division and Nylex IT staff were not being transferred to the new company).[This is an example of how I can carry out assignments for two different clients simultaneously. I was primarily doing work for Axa at this time, but was able to take on the part-time Huon role as well.]

Established financial management framework for the bank’s eNational Program, to monitor progress against budget and forecast future expenditures. eNational covered all eCommerce activities being developed by the bank.

Following earlier work for NAB IT and discussions with senior managers, I initiated a project to install specialised budgeting and planning software in order to further improve financial management within NAB IT.I selected Hyperion Pillar as the most appropriate budgeting and planning tool, obtained approval for project, acquired licences, installed software and replicated existing costing and planning processes in Pillar. This included integrating IT costing with financial planning, which were previously separate processes, and added a five-year business planning cycle to the process. The outcome was that time taken to prepare the annual budget was reduced by two months and the quality of analysis improved significantly.

Following a restructure of NAB's IT Finance department, I took on temporary responsibility for all accounting functions, supervised costing staff and took leading role in financial management of NSITE, including development of a long-term planning horizon, pending appointment of a full-time person to the position. This role was one of five comprising the NAB IT Finance Leadership Team.

Developed IT product costing systems utilising Activity Based Costing principles, integrated costing model into annual planning process, liased with IT Account Management team to explain IT charges to internal customers and instituted program of continuous improvement in costing and planning.

Established financial management framework to monitor progress against budget and to forecast future expenditures for the bank's Year 2000 Program, then undertook day-to-day financial management of the progject.

[The company was previously called Bendix Mintex]Directly responsible to the Finance Director for managing all financial and accounting activities within the company and providing expert financial and taxation advice to him.Main achievements:Prepared monthly Profit & Loss reports for CEO and US parent company,reducing time taken to do this to from 1 week to 2 working days per month.Managed the Treasury function: implemented cash flow management practices to optimise borrowings and investments.Assisted the Finance Director in developing five-year strategic plans and integrated these into the annual budgeting process.Successfully applied to the Australian Customs Service to claim export facilitation credits on sales of manufacturing equipment. A prior application had been rejected. This was expected to earn additional revenue of $500,000pa.Introduced significant cultural change. Transformed the department from having a transactional processing focus to one with a strong internal customer service focus.

Initially engaged to carry out financial and cost modelling. This assignment was extended to enable me to finalise costings and conduct investment analysis on several major IT projects. Budgets for the projects ranged from $5m for an inventory analysis system to $40m+ for an IT communications infrastructure.I then assumed responsibility for the entire cost and management accounting function. This involved utilising my accounting, IT and spreadsheeting skills to develop monthly management reports for products and projects. Activity Based Costing principles were formally adopted during this period.Main achievements:Converted a manual reporting process to an automatic one, utilising an Oracle general ledger system to allocate costs via recurring monthly journals and to produce standard monthly reports.Carried out lengthy investigations into the financial viability of products and projects using techniques such as discounted cashflow and payback in formulating recommendations.

Engaged at Alcoa of Australia (Portland Aluminium) as part of a national project team to implement PeopleSoft’s general ledger software in a client/server environment. At Portland, I was the sole project team member on site.The Australian PeopleSoft implementation formed part of a global project to re-design financial reporting, specifically to transmit financial data to Head Office in Pittsburgh in a form to expedite Board reporting. I also partook in this project, redesigning Portland Aluminium's general ledger to connect to their manufacturing system and efficiently consolidate data within the parameters of the global general ledger.As a result of the successful completion of both projects, Portland reported within one half day to Alcoa of Australia Head Office and Australia to Pittsburgh within one working day. The Board met to review global financial data within three working days.I also developed training programs to educate site staff in the use of the new software.

Engaged to assist Ansett Head Office Finance staff to migrate the finance and accounting functions of Eastwest Airlines from their regional head office in Tamworth, NSW to the Melbourne Head Office environment.

Directly responsible to the Managing Director and accountable for all financial management and accounting for the business.Main achievements:Treasury - implemented significantly improved cash flow management practices, reducing month end borrowings (overdraft) from $2.5m to under $600,000 within three months.Supervised debt collection and took an active role in collecting large customer debts as circumstances dictated in order to improve cashflow, reducing overdraft interest expense by 95%.

Based in Ballarat. Directly responsible to the Regional Manager. Assisted him to meet his accountability for all aspects of regional operations through providing expert financial management advice.Main achievements:By lending to clients on the basis of value to the business, using appropriate lending ratios and through prompt recognition of, and responding to, problems, bad debts were reduced to zero at a time of agricultural recession.Prepared a strategic business plan, enabling the region to emerge quickly from recession, becoming the first in Australia to be restored to profitability in the face of arguably the worst agricultural recession in nearly a century.Responsible for Human Resource management, instituted staff training and development plans and established a pilot managers and supervisors development program. The program substantially boosted staff confidence in their managerial capabilities and staff supervisory skills.

Responsible to the National Manager Property and General Manager Finance for the property accounting function.Main achievements:Implemented a management reporting system incorporating annual budgets and monthly performance reports for all properties under management.Reviewed the data processing function, with emphasis on timely management. Evaluated effectiveness of the current system, considering alternative software packages where appropriate. Became a member of the company’s newly-formed IT Committee and took an active role in modernising the company's IT function, including assisting specialist IT staff with the implementation of a PC-based network.Provided financial expertise and commercial support to the National Manager Property for the company's Central Plaza property development project in Brisbane, including development of a ROI model.

Responsible to the Chairman of Venture Stores for accounting for the family's private interests.Prepared management and statutory reports, tax returns, operating and cash flow budgets for 36 trusts and companies.Acted as Company Secretary for all private trusts and companies.

Directly responsible to the General Manager for financial management. Responsibile for completing Board, management and statutory reports, operating and cash flow budgets, managing the Treasury function, IT and Human Resource management. One of four key managers but most staff reported to me. On occasion, acted as the General Manager in his absence.Main achievements:Conducted extensive negotiation with bankers and the national credit union association to ensure funds were available to meet member’s needs during the credit squeeze of 1982/3.Twice upgraded computer systems - first, from a manual accounting system to a Nixdorf hardware/software system and then to an AWA hardware/GCS software system.Assisted the General Manager in marketing. In 1980, our Annual Report won an award from the world association of credit unions for marketing excellence.

Supervised internal auditors in the preparation for, conduct of and reporting on, various financial and operational audits. In this position, I supervised groups of up to 10 auditors as well as conducted audits on my own. This involved extensive travel throughout Australia and twice to Papua New Guinea.

Employment was undertaken as part of Supervised Professional Practice, the 'sandwich year' of my business degree. I was given duties in many departments of the hospital, the majority of which was undertaken within the EDP Manager's and Chief Accountant's departments. I gained experience in all aspects of accounting, particularly preparation of operating and cash flow budgets and monthly management reports.I also worked within the pay office, with full responsibility for preparing weekly and fortnightly payrolls for agency nurses.While working with the EDP Manager, I gained considerable exposure to large-scale EDP operations.

Mba

Dipcm, Corporate Management

Attained 3 Distinctions and 1 Credit in the four subjects examined.

Certificate Fundamentals Of Management

Bbus, Accountancy

Activities and Societies: Basketball teamUndertook 12 months supervised professional practice, working full-time at St Vincent's Hospital.