Dixons Carphone FD, Humphrey Singer
“ As FD, you are more of a player in the strategic conversation. We had a clear gap in our portfolio selling mobile phones and needed to do something about that, because technology was converging and consumers were thinking in a more seamless way,” he says. As is clear from Singers responsibilities, communication of the combined entitys direction of travel was absolutely core to its success, almost as important as calculating whether the deal was beneficial. “In many respects, you end up being a sort of salesman to a lot of stakeholders: selling the story and explaining what youre doing, while a lot of the actual work is being done by the teams back in the company. I spend a huge proportion of my hours explaining externally the story of Dixons Carphone,” explains Singer.
英國(guó)電器零售集團(tuán)Dixons Carphone由Dixons零售和Carphone倉(cāng)庫(kù)集團(tuán)合并而成。財(cái)務(wù)總監(jiān)Humphrey Singer在這樁超級(jí)并購(gòu)交易中的作用顯著而清晰, 他的角色代表了CFO在過(guò)去20年的進(jìn)化路徑?!白鳛樨?cái)務(wù)總監(jiān),更多的工作應(yīng)該是參與戰(zhàn)略對(duì)話。過(guò)去我們的移動(dòng)電話組合銷售之間銜接明顯不暢,隨著技術(shù)的不斷融合,消費(fèi)者以更加無(wú)縫的方式思考,因此我們需要對(duì)此做點(diǎn)什么?!盨inger認(rèn)為,對(duì)于合并后的公司而言,發(fā)展中的溝通是成功的絕對(duì)核心,幾乎與衡量這筆交易的價(jià)值同樣重要。“在很多方面,CFO在利益相關(guān)者面前的角色類似推銷員:賣故事、解釋你在做什么等,而很多實(shí)際的工作是由背后的團(tuán)隊(duì)來(lái)完成的?!?/p>
Betfair CFO,Alex Gersh
Overall, the finance side of the company he runs is now “much leaner and more focused”, adds Gersh. And a key element of that drive, especially for a FTSE 250 company, is compliance and investor confidence. “The confidence of investors and the public in how we operate is very important,” says Gersh. “We hold close to ?300m of UK customers money so the quality of our security and the information we provide must be very robust. We need to be very transparent, so we tweaked our accounting policy so it was very clear if were spending money on operations or capital expenditures. I also introduced, at certain times of the year, profit guidance to investors and we give them a range.”
加入英國(guó)互聯(lián)網(wǎng)博彩公司Betfair不久,CFO Alex Gersh就著手使Betfair實(shí)現(xiàn)了盈利迅猛增長(zhǎng)。他認(rèn)為,總體而言,公司的財(cái)務(wù)變得更精益、更集中。另外,對(duì)于一家富時(shí)250指數(shù)公司而言,增長(zhǎng)背后的一大關(guān)鍵因素是合規(guī)性和投資者信心。“我們管理著英國(guó)客戶的近3億英鎊資金,對(duì)透明度的要求非常高。對(duì)此,我們對(duì)會(huì)計(jì)政策進(jìn)行了調(diào)整,能夠很清楚地了解錢是花在運(yùn)營(yíng)上還是用在資本支出上,尤其是在進(jìn)行大的資本投資時(shí)。此外,在每年的特定時(shí)間,我還會(huì)為投資者指導(dǎo)利潤(rùn)預(yù)期,向他們提供一個(gè)利潤(rùn)范圍?!?/p>
BrewDog FD,Neil Simpson
In terms of set up costs, the international bars are on a partner arrangement so cost calculations are not an issue but here in the UK the business looks at payback in terms of beer sales and units profitability itself. "We have a standard template, but within that template we have outliers so we might have smaller or bigger, higher profile sights that fall out with the norm. But that norm means we set a benchmark where we look for payback of our in costs with 24 to 36 months. That's not hard and fast but it's a good guide to which we work," Simpson says.
作為蘇格蘭釀酒廠Brewdog的財(cái)務(wù)總監(jiān),Neil Simpson為這家標(biāo)新立異的啤酒生產(chǎn)商帶來(lái)了財(cái)務(wù)智慧。就設(shè)置成本而言,國(guó)際化酒吧的建設(shè)由合作伙伴來(lái)安排,所以不存在成本計(jì)算問(wèn)題;但在英國(guó)市場(chǎng),必須根據(jù)啤酒銷售和單位盈利能力來(lái)看投資回報(bào)。“我們有一個(gè)標(biāo)準(zhǔn)模板,模板內(nèi)又設(shè)定了異常值,能夠?qū)ζx常態(tài)的結(jié)果進(jìn)行監(jiān)測(cè)。不過(guò),這種常態(tài)是我們?cè)O(shè)定的一個(gè)基準(zhǔn),用24到36個(gè)月的時(shí)間獲得投資回報(bào)。雖然達(dá)到這個(gè)目標(biāo)并不難,實(shí)現(xiàn)也不需要太長(zhǎng)時(shí)間,但對(duì)于我們的工作而言是一個(gè)很好的指導(dǎo)。”