My role as group finance director at the Ageas bowl
involves looking after this wonderful 200 acre site that
you've got here from the financial perspective. So we
have 171 room, Hilton Hotel, we have the fabulous international
cricket venue that you can see behind us here which hosts the
southern Braves, the Hampshire hawks, our Southern Vipers team,
and also our Hampshire cricket team. We also have on site our
Beefy's restaurant our eforea spa or Hampshire Hampshire
wellness clinic. I'm group finance director so tasked with
responsibility for the financial stewardship, governance, and
making sure that we're responsible for financial risk
management and control and mitigation. Day to day my role
involves responsibility for group financial accounts. So
that'll be month end accounts, budgets, forecasts, managing
cash across the business, investment appraisals of
projects, and long term financial planning for the
business. So just to give you an example of what that looks like
so, over the last week, I've met with the director of cricket to
look at his playing budget for next season. I've met with the
groundsman to look at their five year capex budget, sat down and
analysed variances with the head of catering and also looked
across the future in terms of what our future development
projects might hold for us here at the venue. My journey into
the sport sector. So at the University of Huddersfield, I
did a four year course there were the first two years I did
an accounting diploma in higher education, which gave me
exemptions from ACCA papers one to 10. Then my third year at
university, I did the last four ACCA papers. So I was already
ACCA exam qualified in my third year at university and my fourth
year, I did a degree in accounting and finance and came
up with first class honours degree. So from there, I joined
an international accountancy practice where some of my
clients included football clubs, sports governing bodies, and
also concert halls. So that was all valuable experience that I'd
use later in my career, then joined KPMG international
accountancy firm, and had the opportunity to work on large
sportswear company audits. And also again, sports clubs as part
of that role. I was very lucky for my first role in industry
where I joined the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester as a finance
and commercial director, the Bridgewater Hall is an
international concert for classical music venue. And it's
also a conference venue. So there's a lot of parallels
between music and football in terms of secondary spend,
tickets and hospitality that you're analysing and preparing
financial analysis for so that put me in good stead as I went
through my career. From there, I went to Asda where I did a lot
of variance analysis around rates and volumes, which today
we look at in the stadium here when analysing our ticket spend
and our retail spend our hospitality spend. And I was
very lucky as to to go and work at Manchester city where I
picked up the new training ground project, which was a 200
million pound facility, the New South stand expansion projects
at the Etihad stadium and launching the women's football
team who we took from crowds of 500 up to three and a half
thousand in the space of a few years. So yeah, that was my
journey into sports. My top tips for accountancy professionals.
So number one, I think perseverance pays off. So to
coin a phrase that was used by the late Shane Warne, who played
over 300 times for Hampshire Cricket Club. He said, Never
give up. Absolutely never, ever give up. And I think in your
accountancy career, that's something that you have to have
is that perseverance and that resilience. So I can remember
when I started out in my career, and I was applying for training
contracts at accountancy firms, I got 10s of letters back that
were rejection letters, but you have to keep going forward. And
then eventually you'll get that break. So you have to let those
bad days in your career, strengthen your resolve to try
even harder to succeed, I think and take lessons from them as
and accountant as an individual. And that would be my first tip
is perseverance pays off. My second tip for young finance
professionals is around integrity and honesty and your
reputation. So I think reputation is key to any
accountant. And how you kind of carry yourself within a business
with the integrity that you have with how you dress, how you
treat yourself, how you treat customers, suppliers, how you
treat your colleagues, and how you turn up and show up for
events. It's really important. People have to have credibility
in yourself. You have to have honesty in the numbers that
you're presenting. Yeah, so
reputation is key. As a finance professional, I'd say. My third
top tip is around respect. So the respect that you have for
yourself, for your colleagues and for individuals within a
business. I've been really fortunate in my career to work
with some really great leaders so people like Anne Pitcher I
worked with at Selfridges, Brian Marwood, I worked with at Man
City and now David Mann who's our CEO at the cricket club that
you see behind me here. No matter how hectic their
schedules are they always find time to go and find people and
say thank you for their work, to show them appreciation for the
work that they've done. And I think having that respect for
individuals is really important. It's something that I'm trying
to take into my career as a group finance director and
emulate in my role as well.