UNITED KINGDOM 20 Finance Monthly Taxation Awards 2024. I qualified as an ICAEW chartered accountant at 20, the youngest person to ever achieve that (I still hold that record) and then I built a career as a technical lecturer, as I enjoyed the technical side of accounting and tax. I qualified as a chartered tax advisor in 2007, and the sense of achievement I gained from passing those really tough exams was huge. This was still during the time when all exams had to be taken and passed at one sitting. At that point, there was no situation in tax or accounting that I didn’t feel completely confident about advising upon, and I look back on that feeling very fondly. After my technical career, I embarked on a consulting career, doing all sorts of technical projects like IFRS conversions and US GAAP conversions, then later specialising in IPO, M&A work and transformation in general. I’ve worked with some truly fantastic businesses, most are household names. These include Avon, Just Eat, AbInBev, Virgin Media and many more. I didn’t specialise in any particular industry; I was agnostic and focused on the skills rather than the industry, and this has taken me to all sorts of diverse businesses all over the world. I was given the opportunity to step into a CFO role and I jumped at it, and now I’m into my third CFO position.I was CFO at Bowers & Wilkins, a luxury British heritage brand, and then I joined a medical device startup, before finding this role in fresh produce amongst other group businesses. I love the ambiguity of the CFO role, as I have to be wherever the business needs me and change my priorities constantly, thinking ahead to take advantage of opportunities and mitigate risks, I have to be at the very top of my game, always. I must be highly visible and approachable and truly partner the business leaders from a finance standpoint. What are some unique financial challenges specific to the fresh produce industry, such as the impact of climate change on business revenues, and how do you address them in the context of tax and accounting? Climate change is hugely affecting our industry, with our business leaders having never experienced such volatility in their living memory. This year alone we had extreme and unpredictable weather events completely destroying crops and also the El Nino storm in South America, together with war in Israel and the Ukraine. Issues impacting ports can destroy our produce, as it is so perishable. Luckily, we have a great relationship with our many suppliers globally and have diversified our risk as much as possible so that we can continue to supply our customers and in turn, the general public has not seen the potential supply shortages that existed, when they are shopping at the supermarket. The industry moves quickly, and some of our competitors have not been able to continue in business; this is a huge accounting and tax challenge because action needs to be taken really promptly, or the opportunity will get left behind. We have to keep an eye on revenue, ensure that we are controlling our overheads, and manage our liquidity so that we can fuel growth. How do you stay updated with the constantly changing tax and accounting laws and regulations? It’s a huge challenge and I’m not able to be as technical as I once was, because the CFO role requires different skills, including technical but not always. It isn’t possible to be a CFO and be only technical. I always have good advisors around me and a very talented team, and I learned early in my career to fact-check everything in case of changes, so I continue to do that, even if I’m certain of the answer. I increasingly believe that it isn’t possible to keep up to date with multi-jurisdiction tax and accounting rules, let alone alongside applying the rules practically in business. Can you discuss a particular project or case that you are especially proud of during your tenure at DPS Limited, and more broadly, working for Terradace companies? Not yet, we have a diverse group of businesses and there is a huge business project that we are currently I love the ambiguity of the CFO role, as I have to be wherever the business needs me and change my priorities constantly, thinking ahead to take advantage of opportunities and mitigate risks, I have to be at the very top of my game, always.
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