James Arnold Email & Phone Number

St Albans, GB

London, England, United Kingdom

Responsible for leading the company budgeting process, and companywide business partnering to support strategic projects and improve performance to annual budget.

London, England, United Kingdom

• An expansion of my previous role as Real Estate Accountant to implement the strategic focus on Delivery Kitchens and to manage an expanded team.Key Achievements:
• Creating a new franchisee deal structure to ensure improved franchisee sentiment towards new restaurants.
• Leading the Delivery Kitchen Cross Functional Team and providing the financial projections and analysis for 7 Delivery Kitchen openings in 2021.
• Promotion to a Delivery Kitchen specific project role starting in March 2022.
• Successfully coaching my direct report and a new starter looking after franchise rental income through our 2022 financial plan process.

London, England, United Kingdom

• A business partnering role with Estates team, providing financial support and companywide profitability analysis for the new restaurant openings pipeline and performance of the current estate.Key Responsibilities:
• Influencing McDonald’s new store pipeline strategy, including financial assessment of all new restaurant sites (circa 200 restaurants), running key sign off meetings, and gaining executive approvals.
• Analysing new restaurant performance and leading cross functional stakeholder meetings to bring improvements into the pipeline.
• Creating and presenting new restaurant franchise deals for circa 40 openings per year.
• Financial recommendations for property lease extensions and freehold purchase decisions to ensure optimal real estate deals and to inform McDonald’s real estate portfolio.
• Financial planning and projections for the new restaurants, contributing £156m of sales and £18m of income growth annually.

London, England, United Kingdom

• A business partnering role with operations to manage franchisee financial returns with rental income management accounting responsibilities.Key Responsibilities:
• Reviewing financial returns for 35 franchisees across 300 franchised restaurants.
• Working closely with operations to identify franchisee/restaurants of concern and present recommended adjustments to rent structures to senior stakeholders.
• Modelling selling price and franchisee rent structure for the sale of 30 restaurants to franchisees.
• Providing analysis to support the approval of franchisee-to-franchisee restaurant sales.
• Completing the financial plan and projections for £524m of annual franchisee rental Income.

London, England, United Kingdom

• A secondment to the contract and procurement consultancy department to broaden my business acumen. Key Responsibilities:
• Working closely with client business teams to make recommendations for changes to existing contracts and contract management process changes to deliver increased value.

London, United Kingdom

• A 3-year ACA training contract within external audit working on a varied client base. This included leading teams of up to 6 on complex audits for clients with turnovers of up to £160m and asset bases of over £60m.Key.
• Owning client engagements, building trust and credibility by being the key RSM contact from start to finish, and communicating complex analysis in business terms.
• Developing commercial awareness through detailed analytical reviews, identifying key business drivers, and providing narrative for the movements in turnover, gross margins, other key costs and balance sheet figures.
• Management of the audit work from planning through to completion, including the supervision of teams, creating budgets and monitoring the financial performance with a focus on optimising profitability.Key Achievements:
• Won supervisor of the month twice out of circa 60 eligible employees.
• Performing above my title by supervising and leading audits after just 18 months in the role.

London, England, United Kingdom

• A Field Sales role taking responsibility for 250 independent accounts in central London. Key Achievements:
• Jumped 72 ranking places to finish 18th out of 110 sales reps for the region in my first year.
• Regularly met or exceeded targets leading to a promotion to a high profile sales area in central London.

Southend-on-Sea, England, United Kingdom

• A 12-month University placement gaining experience across all areas of marketing.Key Achievements:
• Gaining an extended placement to become the interim UK Trade Marketing manager.
• Increasing the retail website visitors by 40% visitors and 35% sales using problem solving skills.

Aca Qualification, Chartered Accountancy, Pass

Bachelor’S Degree, Management Science, 2:1

Activities and Societies: Cricket Team

High School