• Reporting to the group Controller EMEA: Poland Based
• Closing competition commission application for acquisition of Solenis South Africa
• Maintaining relationships with banking partners
• Securing financial facilities for working capital as well as capex projects
• Commercial financial support and guidance for capital projects, pricing of products
• Ultimate responsibility for SSA financial function, including:
• Annual budget preparation
• Annual audit & Financial statements 3 companies
• Plant Controlling
• Financial Controlling
• Payroll 300 people
• Collections
• Treasury
• Financial support for product optimisation
• Management of insurance and risk portfolio
• Preparation of annual operating, capex and plant budgets

• Reporting to the CFO: Merensky Timber, leader in plantation and sawmilling operations in South Africa.
• Treasury Management and Planning.
• Corporate valuation.
• Representation on Board of Directors including external shareholders.
• Providing the financial framework to implement the profitable strategy.
• Redefining and negotiation working capital management strategy in order to improve credit lines.
• Leading team of 24, including 3 financial managers across South African Operations
• Deal negotiations with export trading partners.
• Management of payroll of 2 000 employees.

• Reporting to the Vice President Finance Asia, Middle East and Africa and indirectly Senior Vice President Commercial Africa.
• Regional finance support for African Operations, managing three offices in Johannesburg, Accra and Addis Ababa.
• Annual turnover of over EUR 100 million, rapidly expanding African operation, within a customer centric organisation, structured around commercial service to customers.
• Commercial deal planning, across Africa, including Kenya, Angola, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Algeria, Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo.
• Structure of capacity deals, finance and equipment for customer solutions.
• Contract negotiation with end users.
• Managing of credit and collection team based in the Netherlands

• Reporting to the Vice President Finance Asia, Middle East and Africa and Senior Vice President Commercial Africa within a Global Matrix Organisation, SES being the global leader in Satellite Operations.
• Providing the financial framework to implement the profitable growth strategy and objectives of the region in line with the SES strategic and business plans
• Regional finance support for African Operations, four offices in Johannesburg, Accra, Lagos and Addis Ababa. Deal structuring, rate card determination, pricing strategy for individual satellites.
• Management of global financial functions AR in The Netherlands, Controlling in Luxembourg and commercial financial support for APAC on interim basis.
• Designed metrics for improvement of sales by providing financial framework:
• Running of Sales Leadership Team meetings
• Establishing pipeline review meetings for regional sales leaders
• Developed and implemented sales pipeline reporting and monitoring using SAP CRM
• Rolling sales forecasting depending on multiple variables
• Negotiation with local banks: Standard Bank, Investec, JP Morgan for custom African credit solutions, hedging options, local currency repatriation in South Africa, Nigeria and Burkina Faso
• Commercial deal planning, across Africa, including Nigeria, Kenya, Angola, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Algeria, Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo.
• Contract negotiation with end users, by attending, communicating, relationship building with key customers CEO’s, CFO’s and CTO’s.
• Appointed as Compliance Officer for Africa based on reputation for independence, fairness, frankness and respect for corporate governance.

Training of group staff on:

• Anti-bribery,
• Anti-money laundering,
• Ethics,
• Internal controls,
• Data Protection,
• Conflict of interests

• Reporting to the Vice President Finance Asia, Middle East and Africa and indirectly Senior Vice President Commercial Africa.
• Regional finance support for African Operations, managing three offices in Johannesburg, Accra and Addis Ababa.
• Annual turnover of over EUR 100 million, rapidly expanding African operation, within a customer centric organisation, structured around commercial service to customers.
• Commercial deal planning, across Africa, including Kenya, Angola, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Algeria, Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo.
• Structure of capacity deals, finance and equipment for customer solutions.
• Contract negotiation with end users.
• Managing of credit and collection team based in the Netherlands

• Reporting to the Vice President Finance Asia, Middle East and Africa and Senior Vice President Commercial Africa within a Global Matrix Organisation, SES being the global leader in Satellite Operations.
• Providing the financial framework to implement the profitable growth strategy and objectives of the region in line with the SES strategic and business plans
• Regional finance support for African Operations, four offices in Johannesburg, Accra, Lagos and Addis Ababa. Deal structuring, rate card determination, pricing strategy for individual satellites.
• Management of global financial functions AR in The Netherlands, Controlling in Luxembourg and commercial financial support for APAC on interim basis.
• Designed metrics for improvement of sales by providing financial framework:
• Running of Sales Leadership Team meetings
• Establishing pipeline review meetings for regional sales leaders
• Developed and implemented sales pipeline reporting and monitoring using SAP CRM
• Rolling sales forecasting depending on multiple variables
• Negotiation with local banks: Standard Bank, Investec, JP Morgan for custom African credit solutions, hedging options, local currency repatriation in South Africa, Nigeria and Burkina Faso
• Commercial deal planning, across Africa, including Nigeria, Kenya, Angola, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Algeria, Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo.
• Contract negotiation with end users, by attending, communicating, relationship building with key customers CEO’s, CFO’s and CTO’s.
• Appointed as Compliance Officer for Africa based on reputation for independence, fairness, frankness and respect for corporate governance.

Training of group staff on:

• Anti-bribery,
• Anti-money laundering,
• Ethics,
• Internal controls,
• Data Protection,
• Conflict of interests

• Reporting to the Managing Director.
• Directly managing 5 staff members, 35 finance members of the finance team and 500 employees in total.
• Operational experience - we started with a zero based budget approach to work through the operation in its entirety from a financial point of view, with the following resulting:
• Development and implementation of a recovery plan.
• Stabilisation of cash flows through working capital management.  
• Analysis of per customer investment and profitability.
• Assistance in fleet optimisation and subsequent reduction.
• Process re-engineering of the core finance function.
• The implementation of these initiatives followed, with the result being achievement of the budget in terms of operational profit for the 2012 year.
• Staff management experience - my finance team consists of 35 members, with 5 direct reports. I have learnt that in order to manage a team of this size, it is essential to maintain trust, and open communication with the team, but re-enforce boundaries, I have done this by:
• Implementing weekly departmental meetings.
• Having the meetings in the departmental offices in order to make sure the staff feel at ease.
• Reissuing formal financial policy and procedure.
• Where an internal vacancy became available, source first from within the company.
• Encourage personal growth, by means of furthering education.
• Allowing cross departmental skill transfer, where segregation of duties is not compromised.

Achievements

• Improvement of invested capital from R231 million to R175 million, by motivating and implementing a fleet reduction program.
• Improvement of net debt level from R90 million to R60 million, by improving collections and reduction of invested capital
• Collections reducing aged debts to less than 2% of total book, by weekly monitoring.
• Encouraged goal alignment by development of a company dashboard, and open communication with staff

• Reporting to the Managing Director.
• Directly managing 5 staff members, 35 finance members of the finance team and 500 employees in total.
• Operational experience - we started with a zero based budget approach to work through the operation in its entirety from a financial point of view, with the following resulting:
• Development and implementation of a recovery plan.
• Stabilisation of cash flows through working capital management.
• Analysis of per customer investment and profitability.
• Assistance in fleet optimisation and subsequent reduction.
• Process re-engineering of the core finance function.
• The implementation of these initiatives followed, with the result being achievement of the budget in terms of operational profit for the 2012 year.
• Staff management experience - finance team consists of 35 members, with 5 direct reports.
• Have learnt that in order to manage a team of this size, it is essential to maintain trust, and open communication with the team, but re-enforce boundaries, have done this by:
• Implementing weekly departmental meetings.
• Having the meetings in the departmental offices in order to make sure the staff feel at ease.
• Reissuing formal financial policy and procedure.
• Where an internal vacancy became available, source first from within the company.
• Encourage personal growth, by means of furthering education.
• Allowing cross departmental skill transfer, where segregation of duties is not compromised.

Special Project Manager
10-2008 to 10-2011

• Reporting to the Group Financial Director.
• Indirectly managing a staff compliment ranging from 4 divisional Financial Directors to a project team of up to 5, including Engineers, and Programmers.
• Assisted in group acquisition strategy.
• The last deal was involved with in the division was the acquisition of a Namibian Listed company, CIC Holdings. The transaction was valued at R724 million. Involvement in the deal included:
• Consulting on the translation effect of the acquisition.
• Correlating data for the Namibian competition commission application.
• Training of CIC operating company staff on Oracle Hyperion reporting tool.
• Setting up of company structure on Oracle Hyperion for take on of 70 at acquisition balance sheets.
• Fair valuation of acquisition balance sheet.
• Assisting in the purchase price allocation and raising of customer list intangible assets.
• Preparation of disclosure included in the annual financial statements.
• The result was a well integrated financial reporting system and a successful take on of a large complex consolidation into the Imperial framework.
• Implementation of a fixed asset solution - project managed a team of 5 Industrial Engineers and 5 Software Developers to develop a fixed asset register and asset care product.
• Managing group funding requirements and utilisation, from capital allocation to gearing developed a system for daily debt level reporting at executive level.
• Monthly creditor reconciliation sign-off.
• Development, implementation and administration of a BarnOwl internal control monitoring system.
• Review and redesign of the group payroll system:
• Imperial Logistics Payroll Department processes payroll for 57 of our operating companies, and for 5,000 employees, of which approximately 3,000 are wage earners, being paid weekly.
• In 2009, was tasked with review of the payroll system and recommendation of redesign of the system.
• Performed a control system audit, considering the full payroll system, from recruitment to monthly payroll bank account reconciliation and sign off.
• Presented findings to the Imperial Logistics Exco, the recommendations were then implemented, and was responsible for auditing the effectiveness of the new system.
• Annual impairment testing of goodwill using a DCF valuation model
• As required by IFRS, performed an annual impairment test on all remaining business combinations where existing goodwill remained on balance sheet.
• Prepared a free cash flow model to perform the valuation, on approximately 15 companies annually.
• Training of CIMA candidates.

Group IFRS Specialist
01-2007 to 09-2008

• Reporting to Group Financial Controller.
• Preparation and consolidation of annual and interim financial statements for a group of over 1 000 entities.
• Adoption of IFRS 7 within the group - as the IFRS expert to the group, researched the statement prior to the application thereof, defining and implementing disclosures required. That included:
• A group overview of impact of the statement on the group.
• Interviews with each division in the group to establish their exposure to different types of financial instruments.
• Developed a template to collect the requisite data from each division.
• Framed the consolidated result in the full annual report.
• Consolidation of over 1,000 companies and divisions: using Oracle Hyperion, personally responsible for the statement of changes in equity, group accounting policy, and newly issued IFRS statements.
• Framed the Dec 2008 report.
• Defined the treatment adopted for the discontinuance of Aviation and Tyco operations: as the group IFRS expert, defined the treatment we would adopt in valuation and disclosure of the 2 abovementioned operations.
• Provided advised the group CFO on the method adopted for the fair valuation of remaining assets through the income statement, the redesign of the segmental analysis, as well as the full note on the discontinued operations.
• Involvement on the Eqstra IPO.
• The gearing on this division was determined to be too high for the Imperial balance sheet to support. My part in the transaction included:
• Cost of capital and gearing analysis, see dashboard below.
• Assistance in preparing 3 years financial statements for the IPO.
• Preparations for SENS and notices.
• Training of the Eqstra IFRS expert.
• Developed and implemented the Imperial dashboard. A “growth in operating profit” model.
• Corrected the flow of the income statement and balance sheet on Oracle Hyperion

• Reporting to the Group Financial Director.
• Indirectly managing a staff compliment ranging from 4 divisional Financial Directors to a project team of up to 5, including Engineers, and Programmers.
• Assisted in group acquisition strategy.
• The last deal I was involved with in the division was the acquisition of a Namibian Listed company, CIC Holdings. The transaction was valued at R724 million. Involvement in the deal included:
• Consulting on the translation effect of the acquisition.
• Correlating data for the Namibian competition commission application.
• Training of CIC operating company staff on Oracle Hyperion reporting tool.
• Setting up of company structure on Oracle Hyperion for take on of 70 at acquisition balance sheets.
• Fair valuation of acquisition balance sheet.
• Assisting in the purchase price allocation and raising of customer list intangible assets.
• Preparation of disclosure included in the annual financial statements.
• The result was a well integrated financial reporting system and a successful take on of a large complex consolidation into the Imperial framework.
• Implementation of a fixed asset solution - project managed a team of 5 Industrial Engineers and 5 Software Developers to develop a fixed asset register and asset care product.
• Managing group funding requirements and utilisation, from capital allocation to gearing - developed a system for daily debt level reporting at executive level.
• Monthly creditor reconciliation sign-off.
• Development, implementation and administration of a BarnOwl internal control monitoring system.
• Review and redesign of the group payroll system:
• Imperial Logistics Payroll Department processes payroll for 57 of our operating companies, and for 5,000 employees, of which approximately 3,000 are wage earners, being paid weekly.
• In 2009, I was tasked with review of the payroll system and recommendation of redesign of the system. I performed a control system audit, considering the full payroll system, from recruitment to monthly payroll bank account reconciliation and sign off.
• Presented my findings to the Imperial Logistics Exco, the recommendations were then implemented, and I was responsible for auditing the effectiveness of the new system.
• Annual impairment testing of goodwill using a DCF valuation model
• As required by IFRS, I performed an annual impairment test on all remaining business combinations where existing goodwill remained on balance sheet. I prepared a free cash flow model to perform the valuation, on approximately 15 companies annually.
• Training of CIMA candidates.

Achievements

• Developed and implemented a custom software solution for management of fixed assets.
• Integration of the CIC Holdings group into the Imperial Group, including training of staff on Oracle Hyperion.
• Development and implementation of an internal control monitoring system.
• Development and training of up to 10 CIMA trainees on due diligence and valuation processes

Group Ifrs Expert

• Group Financial Controller.
• Preparation and consolidation of annual and interim financial statements for a group of over 1 000 entities, doing annual turnover of over R50 billion.
• Adoption of IFRS 7 within the group - as the IFRS expert to the group, researched the statement prior to the application thereof, defining and implementing disclosures required. That included:
• A group overview of impact of the statement on the group.
• Interviews with each division in the group to establish their exposure to different types of financial instruments.
• Developed a template to collect the requisite data from each division.
• Framed the consolidated result in the full annual report.
• Consolidation of over 1,000 companies and divisions: using Oracle Hyperion, I formed part of the consolidation team for Imperial Holdings Limited. I was personally responsible for the statement of changes in equity, group accounting policy, and newly issued IFRS statements. I also framed the Dec 2008 report, which was published in 2 local newspapers.
• Defined the treatment adopted for the discontinuance of Aviation and Tyco operations: as the group IFRS expert, I defined the treatment we would adopt in valuation and disclosure of the 2 abovementioned operations, with Aviation division closure resulting in a R2.1 billion loss on closure and Tyco a loss of R700 million. I advised the group Financial Director on the method adopted for the fair valuation of remaining assets through the income statement, the redesign of the segmental analysis, as well as the full note on the discontinued operations.
• Involvement on the Eqstra unbundling: during the 2008 year, Imperial Holdings took the decision to unbundle the capital intensive leasing division. The gearing on this division was determined to be too high for the Imperial balance sheet to support. My part in the transaction included:
• Cost of capital and gearing analysis, see dashboard below.
• Assistance in preparing 3 years financial statements for the unbundling.
• Preparations for SENS and unbundling notices.
• Training of the Eqstra IFRS expert.
• Developed and implemented the Imperial dashboard. Under our previous CEO, Imperial was run on a “growth in operating profit” model. In 2008 Hubert Brody was appointed as Group CEO. He chose to run the company on a WACC vs. ROIC model. I developed a 1 page overview, which would be used to determine the health of the company in a single page. As part of this process, I corrected the flow of the income statement and balance sheet on Oracle Hyperion, defined the terms:
• WACC (Weighted Average Cost of Capital).
• Return.
• Invested capital.
• After 6 months development, the 1 pager was christened the Imperial Dashboard. I personally provided group wide training on the dashboard. Even in his 2010 staff presentation, the group CEO still made mention of group wide use of the dashboard.

Achievements

• IFRS 7 Implementation.
• Discontinuance of Aviation and Truck assembly operations.
• Unbundling of Eqstra.
• Development and implementation of a performance management dashboard

• Reporting to the Audit Manager and Audit Partner.
• Managing audit teams of up to 10.
• Articles were performed at a medium firm of about 100 staff, located in Pretoria.
• Managed teams of up to 10 people, with various interesting clients.
• Senior on the audit team, planning and implementation of audit.
• Planning, performance and review of statutory audit work.
• Preparation and translation of financial statements.
• Preparation and review of the financial statements to ensure compliance with IFRS, the Companies Act and JSE listing requirements.
• Providing on the job, as well as technical training to the audit team.
• Preparation of cash flow analyses and other Management reports.
• Performing tax calculations and providing tax advice to clients, corporate as well as individual.

Achievements

• Senior on largest firm audit