Liam Ruddy Email & Phone Number

London

London, England, United Kingdom

A fantastic 14 months as interim CFO with many great highlights; global intercompany debt restructuring, legal defence against Mexican government expropriation attempt, mentoring finance teams in UK and Mexico, managing international HR issues, budgeting and forecasting. Another project, supporting an outstanding CEO.

London, England, United Kingdom

Providing financial guidance to a Canadian exploration company (based in London) listed on the TSX.V exchange.

London

Provided solid financial leadership and guidance to the UK's leading national railway maintenance & infrastructure services provider, during the pandemic sensitive trading period.Completed on a £55M ABL funding package for the Group which comprised £45M Plant & Machinery and £10M Accounts Receivables revolvers, with PNC Bank (the UK's leading ABL provider).Refinancing was completed inside six months after running a competitive process involving 7 major banks and obtaining several term-sheets; securing the future for the Quattro business for another four years. The result was a very satisfying outcome for all parties.Designed & implemented business planning models and reporting package to underpin and support the new finance facility which provided a platform for much improved cash foreacsting and better/more confident decision making at board level. As confidence grew in the integrity of information the working environment transitioned to become more relaxed with less intensity and friction at management level, providing headroom for planning and reflection. Revamped Group management accounts to become topical and more relevant, streamlined processes reducing preparation time by 50%.

Guernsey, London & Philippines

Metals Exploration plc (AIM listed) is a natural resources exploration and development company with an operating gold-molybdenum mining asset in the Philippines - 1,050,000 oz gold reporting to the Measured and Indicated categories and 900,000 oz gold within the Mining Proven & Probable Reserve category.CFO through the construction phase of the project development into commercial operations; Company Secretary and GM Commercial.Partner to the Executive Chairman/CEO taking the project from junior explorer through construction and into commercial operations, in the face of adversity and major challenges in a difficult jurisdiction. The Philippines can be a volatile (sometimes hostile) environment for foreign investors in mining.- Led and completed a US$85M project debt facility to finance construction with two leading resource banks in Asia (HSBC & BNP Paribas);- Raised +$100M equity as additional construction, infrastructure & working capital finance via several private and open offer share placements- Raised US$50 million mezzanine debt finance for working capitalFantastic achievement bringing the project into commercial operations after navigating a plethora of political & regulatory challenges and anti-mining roadblocks.

Guernsey

Project Finance Director on prestigious residential construction projects; one in London and one in USA (Beverly Hills). I was able to bring a commercial influence, develop strong financial controls and reporting; bringing a high level of commercial acumen to the business resulting in savings of circa £25M in fit-out costs on One Hyde Park project. Chelsea Barracks (London): Successfully guided the Chelsea Barracks construction project to achieving planning permission; the largest residential build project in the UK since WWII. Managing a budget of £1.39bn primarily funded through a Sharia finance leasing package out of Qatar - the largest ever Sharia financing package up to that date and important to Qatar’s sovereign fund rating. Working closely with and advising the finance and treasury teams of Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Corporation, leading them through various aspects of UK law, accounting framework and tax. Project Lotus LLC (Beverly Hills, California): Project Finance Director on a high end residential construction project which acquired 8 hectares of prime Beverly Hills real estate in the most expensive land deal ever transacted in the USA. Managing and interacting with a plethora of municipal committees/departments, mayors, NGOs, charities, liaising with the local press and pressure groups. Guided the project up to Entitlement Stage (planning permission in the UK).

International

Group Financial Director of an international drinks group whose brands comprised; Hine & Monnet cognacs, Angostura rums & bitters, Scotch whisky brands Bunnahabhain, Scottish Leader, Black Bottle, Deanston, Ledaig, and a principal supplier of rum to Bacardi Corporation.I led a small team to successful complete on a $45M acquisition of the largest distillery in the USA (ex-Seagram, Indiana) from the Pernod Ricard group which included one of the largest bottling operations in the USA. Guided the negotiations with US unions including the Teamster union out of New York and put in place a $5M working capital facility with Bank of America.Lead role in the successful acquisition of sevral international distribution companies to provide route to market for the Group’s brand owning companies: Fassbind (Switzerland), (UK), Société Dugas (France), Chateau Online (France), E&A Scheer (Amsterdam)I successfully built the group financial infrastructure throughout a diverse but growing European Group of drinks companies (UK, Switzerland, France, Turkey, & Holland). Implementing a consistent group reporting package, providing consistency in reporting. treasury support. budgeting, forecasting.

Guernsey, Channel Islands

An international sales operation (FMCG) (UK, South America, Europe, & South Africa) with annual sales in excess of 2m cases. Specialist in Own Label and Private Label products in Scotch whisky, gin, vodka and cream liqueurs. Wholly owned by Wm Grants.Strong financial & commercial to a group of 3 offshore sales companies. In partnership with the CEO, strategically realigned the companies and transformed the Group from loss making to being highly profitable with sustainable strong cash flows. Strengthened the balance sheet, eliminated debt from it, vastly improved working capital and consolidated the company into a great state of health. This was achieved by introducing a more disciplined/focused approach to the business, more sophisticated financial planning & modelling, continuous forecasting and product/sector reporting, partnering with regional distributors, opening new markets and creating regional brands, incentivised salesmen to achieve higher margins, successfully negotiated international agency deals for rums, vermouth, tequila, & cordials; adding new revenue streams to the business by leveraging distribution channels.Grew sales in excess of 200% and signed the largest ever Scotch whisky sales deal (up to that date) with a leading European multi-national supermarket group. I was involved in all major sales deals and evaluations of national or international accounts, major wholesalers and regional distributors. Highly experienced in online internet auctions (B2B), commercial contract negotiations (e.g. all UK leading supermarkets, BAA duty free).Trademark registration & protection: during the period 2000 to 2002 I won a successful legal challenge to the Company’s Scotch whisky brand in Venezuela and which involved the removal of a corrupt judge from office. This experience resulted in a successful challenge of the Venezuelan constitution in trademark registration by our legal advisors, (Torres Plaz Araujo).

Scotland

Head of Finance in the largest grain distillery in Western Europe producing over 100m litres of alcohol annually, but which had been neglected by previous management. The challenge was to reinvigorate the distillery to be the lowest cost producer in the industry; successfully achieved after two years.Financial reporting & measurements were unreliable, lacking in detail, provided late, laden with misinformation and totally inadequate to support a major manufacturing business. Manual data collection and processing systems were replaced with several data processing and collection database systems across a collection of fragmented business units; reorganisation of the finance team to be business focused & actively participating in the distillery operations and a sugar manufacturing plant. The immediate tangible results were to identify many areas of inefficiency, waste and mal-accounting. Corrective action plans successfully implemented eliminating all of these issues resulting in a highly motivated finance team and significantly improving the financial performance in distilling; the distillery proved to be the lowest cost producer in the industry.A strong level of financial control was exercised in capital projects in excess of £30m in each of the two years, annual overheads of £40m, cereal purchases of £50m. In my two years at the distillery I turned it around from a seriously underperforming business unit to one that performed to budget. Implemented an integrated financial reporting processes resulting in a reduced monthly reporting cycle from 15+ days to within 3 days of month end. Emphasis on accuracy of information. I played a central role in implementing cultural changes in working practices and remuneration in a highly unionised workforce over a two year period, harmonising working and remuneration conditions.A wonderful journey of achievement and satisfaction.

Prestwick, Scotland

A traditional group financial reporting role which included consolidations, management accounts, treasury, tax and information systems. Transitioned lease accounting for aircraft from off balance sheet to on balance sheet in compliance with change in standard accounting practice at that time.

Prestwick, Scotland

Commercial aircraft manufacturing of Jetstream 31 & 41; RJ126, BAe146 and ATP aircrafts. One of the largest single site enterprises in Scotland employing in excess of 2,000 people.Utilising my extensive systems experience I project managed the change to a modern set of systems for various manual processes or outdated systems in a large manufacturing plant. This facilitated faster information delivery, reduced reconciliation work, greater transparency of work flows, identification of archaic practices, further applications and streamlining of data processing & reporting, higher accuracy of information.A selection of systems/applications developed:- General ledger- Aircraft manufacturing cost ledger- MRPII where BOMs for a single aircraft could be 20,000 items and hundreds of sub-assemblies- Job costing (in house BAe group designed) - cash forecasting and treasury- fixed assets and fixed asset tracking- sales order processing for a £300m turnover spares divisionExtensive training programs were delivered

Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Division of Murray International Holdings Ltd.Providing consolidated group accounts and monthly management accounts.Implemented SUN accounts throughout the group; provided training and information development.I developed database skills on DataEase and was able to apply this to a large customer database where records were previously retained in paper form. The benefit to the company was that I could provide excellent commercial reports which provided sales leads and increased turnover considerably.

Transitioned into the role of Management Accountant and was able to apply my programming and systems skills to business applications. This was in an era where laptops were first introduced into business and on reflection I am grateful to have started work in industry at the same time.I was able to migrate various (many) manual processes to spreadsheets and build macros for consolidation in processing. Applications developed and rolled out across various business units in S&N included stock sheets, depreciation, extended trial balances, budgets, reporting, graphical presentations.This was a wonderful start to my finance career where I had free latitude to build models which could reduce processing time and deliver accurate information fast. It was very gratifying at an early stage in my career to be able to teach and skill up senior executives, managers and supervisors on the use of spreadsheets, word processing and operating systems. From there I developed my database application skills in conjunction with the analytical use of spreadsheets and graphical output. This has been a particular strength throughout my career.

Edinburgh

Privileged to have commenced my working career with S&N plc in the knowledge that over 2,000 candidates had applied for this role.

Associate Member

Bachelor'S Degree, Economics & Finance, Honours