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Financial manager: Peter

This Case Study belongs to Financial manager.

Today I am responsible for the treasury, insurance and aviation finance departments for a major UK Plc. I decided to study business at university. My reasoning was that at 18 I didn't have a fixed idea of the area I wanted to work in and I felt that a degree in business would be general enough to allow me to enter a number of professions once I graduated. As I got closer to graduating I decided that I wanted to train as a management accountant. I chose management accountancy over the more traditional route of chartered accountancy because I wanted to be actively involved in helping to run a real business from the start of my career. I felt that chartered accountancy was more of a retrospective look at how a company has performed in the past and not really concerned with the future.

I was fortunate enough to obtain a full-time management accounting role on a graduate training programme with a major food company during the milk round series of interviews three months before I graduated. I would really emphasise the importance of being clued up about where you want to go by the start of your final year at university as graduate recruitment runs throughout this period rather than just at the end. Many of the best opportunities will have gone by that point!

My initial role was as a management accounting trainee, gathering information to help the company understand where it was efficient or otherwise. At the same time, over the first two years of my career I studied management accounting and eventually took and passed the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) exams.

Soon after that I joined a large US investment bank and worked closely with the currency and share traders. I particularly enjoyed the dynamic nature of working in markets that never closed and were changing second by second. This dynamic aspect of my role was a key influence on my decision to move away from accounting and specialise in treasury. Three years later I joined a mobile telephone company. At the time of joining the telephone company it was agreed that, after 12 months setting up the management accounting department, I would be offered the role of treasurer. I've been a treasurer ever since and I subsequently enrolled with the Association of Corporate Treasurers (ACT) and passed the AMCT exams.

I particularly enjoy the forward looking nature of treasury, whether it involves forecasting cashflows, currency exposures or planning to re-finance the company's debt facilities. Most of my time is spent looking forward and managing future risks and not looking back adding up yesterday’s financial scores! I now manage three departments with a total team of 32 and I would say that the softer side of my role (dealing with people) is more challenging than the technical side. Looking back, I would say that my qualifications i.e. my primary degree and professional qualifications were key enablers in allowing my career to develop. Without them, I'm not sure I would have been invited to even apply for most of my roles. However, I would also say that most of the skills I now employ to do my job were obtained through work experience rather than educational training.

If asked what are the most important attributes in developing a successful career I would say that the ability to get things done in the right way and in the right timeframe is uppermost. Managing and delivering on your manager’s expectations of you is key to obtaining trust and with that comes more responsibility and hopefully promotion and success.

Case Study sourced by Andrew Leacy of AGCAS, 12 February 2009.