It’s a Private Equity (P/E) backed SME start-up dealing in retail outlets and food & cafe businesses in busy shopping centers and railway stations in Essex.● Overall responsible for finance functional activities with 10 reporting staff.● Business development strategies; challenging assumptions and decision making as appropriate for new businesses, divestments, investment decisions.● Preparation of financial statements, Balance Sheet, P&L, Cash flows, Capex, half-yearly reporting & statutory accounts following IFRS.● Responsible for all finance functions including P2P, O2C and B2R.● Budgeting, forecasting, 5 years financial plan, business plan presentation product costing & pricing, management accounting & reporting, financial analyses, guidance on all business plans, targets and business drivers.● Treasury, financing arrangements, bank reporting and banks relationship management.● Ensuring regulatory requirements of all the statutory bodies are met and all tax and VAT matters including HMRC reporting and internal/external audits.

● Analyzing financial risk of customers, industry and country (EUR 4bln credit limits in A/P).● Preparation and Implementation of A/P Regional Financial Risk Management Guidelines.● Avid presenter of Financial Risk Management topics in business board meetings on “balancing the risk and opportunities”.● Successfully moved away from the traditional credit insurance concept from the organization.● The functional leadership of 17 countries’ Financial Risk Managers in the Asia Pacific (A/P) with a reporting line of 40 FTEs.● The functional leadership of Active Reminding Team is based in Kuala Lumpur (15 FTEs).● Continuous improvement via CRM fitness checks (Audits) within A/P CRM teams.● Dealing with banks on customers and trade finance options.● Key and critical Customer visits to review business development; quarterly financial results and credit quality development.● Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis of selected customers’ credit lines - €2.5mil to €10mil (depending on credit performance).● Quarterly planning on risk assessments renewals.● Monthly management reporting (MIS) on risk development.● Regional Process Owner Order to Cash (O2C) of SAP FSCM (Finance and Supply Chain Module).● Regular upgrade of the risk assessment tool based on the predictability of defaults.

I was a key adviser to the Finance Director with many responsibilities of a Financial Controller. In addition to the duties I fulfilled as Controller I was also involved in a number of other key projects including driving the business intelligence in such a way that we could produce accurate product profitability information and the preparation of management information regarding pricing and strategy decisions. I worked closely with the IT professionals in the organization to develop a new tool that enabled a fast turnaround of new business quotes using the most up-to-date information available from all sectors of the business including customer service, manufacturing, technical, purchasing and finance. The tool I developed not only standardized the USA quotation system but was implemented across Europe as the standard model for quoting for new business.Key responsibilities included:● Compilation and review of the management reporting pack including analysis of all Financial information and performance.● Played a pivotal role in the project that reduced the monthly reporting routine from 15 days in the first month after I arrived to a regular reporting timetable of just 2½ days.● Group reporting of 5 European sites and a number of adjustment entities using Hyperion● Managing the annual budgeting process and consolidation across 5 European sites.● Performance improvement initiatives in the accounts department to reduce the time to create internal management reports from 3 days a month to just 4 hours.● Implementation of new finance modules in the business system.● Management of key financial relationships with group companies both in the USA and Europe.● Cheque signing authority and payment run approval up to £250k per individual supplier.● Cash management for the new venture in Russia.● Day-to-day support for the workload of the 4 direct reports in the Finance Department.● Stock valuation and standard cost updates and control.