FD eXcel: 2014

Friday, 25 July 2014

Press Release 24th July - Peter Jones joins FD eXcel

More Members means Greater Expertise at

FD eXcel

FD eXcel, the rapidly expanding outsourced Finance Director group is delighted to announce the appointment of Peter Jones as an Associate Director, thereby growing the team of part time FD’s to seven.

Peter is a Chartered Accountant and highly experienced Finance Director who has extensive international experience within the IT and mobile telecoms markets. Over his many years of experience Peter has developed expertise in establishing financial processes; implementing strategy; leading multi-disciplinary teams; and introducing robust performance management.

Peter has also served as a portfolio FD/Chairman to a variety of SME’s.

FD eXcel was formed in December 2013 and has already grown from a team of two part time Finance Directors to seven. The consultancy’s franchise model is unique and within five months has attracted both UK and international attention with a number of clients ranging from small start-up businesses to international groups considering stock market listings.

In today’s economy many SME’s may find the cost of employing an experienced Finance Director high and one which they simply cannot afford. FD eXcel’s model can alleviate this cost by offering the services of highly experienced commercial FD's at a fraction of the cost of a full time FD.

Whether it's for one day a week or two days a month, FD eXcel’s team is available to help with those difficult issues which are normally dealt with by a full time Finance Director, by providing a flexible cost-effective solution.

Thursday, 5 June 2014

Press Release 3rd June - Redvers Best becomes 6th member of FD eXcel

Number Six for FD eXcel

Experienced Financial Director Redvers Best has recently joined consulting group FD eXcel. Launched at the end of 2013 the outsourced Finance Director firm now has six professional and proficiently skilled FD’s based around the UK offering its extensive range of services to the SME market.

Having qualified with Grant Thornton in 1999 and first appointed as Finance Director in 2005, Red has worked for a variety of PLC and Private Equity backed businesses across multiple business sectors including multi-site and international operations. Red has a preference for working with SMEs and relevant experience includes acquisitions, re-organisations, business reviews and supporting businesses with cash flow difficulties

FD eXcel was formed in December 2013 and has already grown from a team of two part time Finance Directors to six. The consultancy’s franchise model is unique and within five months has attracted both UK and international attention with a number of clients ranging from small start-up businesses to international groups considering stock market listings.

Tuesday, 8 April 2014

Press Release 3rd April - Matthew Dreaper joins FD eXcel

FD eXcel grows to five

Outsourced Finance Director group FD eXcel is delighted to announce the new appointment of Matthew Dreaper, growing the team of part time FD’s to five.

Matthew has held a director position for a number of small and medium-sized businesses over the last 13 years including Finance Director of Enigma Health, the UK's leading pharmacy software business and Group Finance Director of Nucare plc. Whilst at Nucare Matthew was instrumental in a strategic review and the subsequent trade sale of the Nucare group for £49m. Matthew has since set up his own financially-focussed advisory business, which has raised over £2.5m for a number of early-stage technology ventures, with funding coming from both private and professional investors.

Throughout his years of experience Matthew has acquired many skills in order to successfully manage all aspects of a finance function, as well as managing acquisitions, divestments and corporate fund-raising, corporate governance, shareholder communications and negotiations with customers and suppliers, an essential skill set for any client of FD eXcel. Matthew comments, “My experience is founded in global corporations, however through this experience I am able to apply this knowledge as a member of the management team in any number of very different small and medium-sized businesses. I am looking forward to working with the clients of FD eXcel helping them to make successful financial decisions for the future”

FD eXcel was formed in 2013 as a group of outsourced, part time Finance Directors joined forces to deliver “best in class” services to the SME market. For many SME’s, to employ a Finance Director is a huge cost which many cannot afford. FD eXcel can alleviate this heavy cost for its clients by offering the services of highly experienced commercial FD's at a fraction of the cost of a full time FD.

FD eXcel’s Services include:

× Business Health Checks

× Cashflow Management

× Compliance

× Long Term & Exit Planning

× Mentoring & Coaching

× Reporting and KPI’s

× SAGE Training & Reselling

× Trusted Business Partner

Whether it's for one day a week or two days a month, the FD eXcel team is available to help with those difficult issues which are normally dealt with by a full time Finance Director, by providing a flexible cost-effective solution.

Clients operate within a variety of industries including angel investing, automotive, care homes, IT, manufacturing, plant hire, print, property, recycling, satellites, software and telecoms. Turnover’s range between £1 and £40 million.

Sunday, 23 March 2014

How receptive are you, your boss or your organisation to new ways of doing things, new ideas and innovation?

Few things humble and annoy us more than seeing others do what we do well significantly better than we do it ourselves.

We are all creatures of habit, even in our private lives we tend to read the same newspapers, drive the same brand of car, and remain with the same communications supplier. Why shouldn’t we?

Leon C Megginson (Professor of Management and Marketing at Louisiana State University), in 1963 said ‘It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the most adaptable to change.’ This remains equally relevant today as it was then.

Considering the organisations we are part of, most are pretty conservative, earning profits with products or services introduced years ago. Certainly we strive to improve them, but a constantly changing (and at an ever increasing rate) world confronts us with fact that in the long run we cannot survive on doing the same things better and cheaper. Sooner or later the market will meltdown. Look what’s happening to: paper invoices, the fax machine, or the home video tape recorder, and what happened in the past to: the audio cassette player (Walkman™), Betamax™ video systems, and camera film. The challenge is how to ensure your organisation is conducive to doing things differently, receptive to new ideas and ensuring it actively encourages adaptability. How does your ‘Innovation Fitness’ stack up?

What is innovation? Put simply it is doing different things, going into new territories, using new techniques, using new back-office functions, new products, anything to improve the customer experience. On the one hand you are well aware that you have to take new roads before you reach the end of the present cul-de-sac. On the other hand innovation is risky. It can take a lot time, resources and quite frankly, guts. Many of us are risk adverse making the first move all the harder, the most difficult part of a run is opening the front door. Research indicates that only one out of seven innovation projects is successful, so saying yes to innovation can be a risk.

Would you invest your personal savings in a project with a 7 to 1 chance of success? Probably not, but, and here’s the nub, unless you have to. Last year the CEO of BWM AG when asked why BMW started the risky E-car project he responded and I paraphrase ‘Because doing nothing was even a bigger risk’.

So generally, organisations and all their stakeholders will only stick their necks out if doing nothing is a greater risk. They need to break the status quo and create momentum for adaptability through new ideas by making them nervous that doing nothing is a big risk in its own right.

Organisations need to nurture a culture of adaptability, where new ideas are not stifled but actually encouraged and where people are not reticent to suggest new things. Companies, whilst recognising the risk of innovation and doing nothing, need to introduce procedures to mitigate and manage that risk.

Fortunately, there is a plethora of information about this. Exeter University has developed an ‘Innovation Fitness Test’ which evaluates the organisation’s current position and recommends actions to further compound strengths and correct weaknesses. This review can take a few days, however, they have produced a shortened self-assessment questionnaire taking only 15 minutes to complete. This teaser document of 40 straight forward statements (a magazine type questionnaire) assesses how ‘fit’ your company is to 'do things differently' and shows the results in a radar chart. Get different parts of the organisation to complete and compare. I have a MS Excel version of this and if you wish to receive a copy please email me at steve@fdexcel.com

Go for it, be more adaptable and receptive to change, embrace it! Good luck.

This was written by Steve Currigan, a Commercial FD with many years experience as an FD in the renewable and sustainable energy, building facilities and print sectors. It was first published at http://goo.gl/M6ZiNT

Sunday, 26 January 2014

Withdrawal of Quantitative Easing – What will be the impacts on companies?

By way of background, the Bank of England holds £375 billion of gilts. The US Federal Reserve has been buying $85 billion of US bonds each month giving a holding at the end of 2013 of some $3.7 trillion. The Fed is now reducing its monthly purchases by $10 billion to $75 billion of US bonds a month from January 2014 in a process known as “tapering”. This is still significant monetary easing in the USA but it marks a turning point. Over time we can expect the monetary easing to stop completely and eventually reverse through reductions in the gilt and bond holdings and increases in interest rates.

There are a number of consequential effects that can be expected, some of which are likely to impact your business:

Interest rates on government debt will rise as these have been driven down by QE. This may have an impact on company borrowing costs and if so, will reduce company profitability. At the start of the Financial Crisis interest rates fell rapidly, with UK bank base rates moving from 5% in late 2008 to 0.5% in early 2009. There is a good chance that once rates start to rise the increases will come quickly.
Pension liabilities will fall as they are calculated by reference to long-term interest rates. The interesting question will be what happens to assets held by pension schemes. To the extent the investment is in government bonds, prices are likely to fall leading to lower asset values. Investments in equities could rise as the economy recovers but this will be offset by higher interest costs. The other factor affecting equity prices is the multiple of earnings on which they trade – this is the big uncertainty. It could rise due to greater confidence or it might fall as the returns on “safer” investments increase.
Some “zombie” businesses which have delayed failure due to low interest rates and over generous tolerance by banks will fail. Others may experience a sufficient improvement in their trading performance that they come off the critical list. A key differentiator here is likely to be the cash conversion cycle. Those that quickly convert purchases into sales receipts may do well if they are able to grow their business to offset the increasing interest costs; those that have a long cash conversion cycle could become insolvent as trading volumes improve.
Bank lending is likely to remain subdued as a result of the higher capital requirements imposed by Central Bankers, who may even develop the nerve to introduce contra-cyclical capital requirnents, squeezing the supply of credit further.
Currency exchange rates will change with consequential impacts on import and exports. The effects will not be uniform but there are likely to be unpleasant consequences for emerging market economies such as India which require structural reform. Predictions in the area of exchange rates are fraught with difficulty – the US dollar often moves in a counter intuitive ways as investors value it’s “reserve current” status in times if turmoil. The economies of Brazil, India, Turkey, South Africa & Indonesia are seen as being particularly exposed due to their high current account deficits (reliance on imports) and all suffered in May 2013 when the Fed first mentioned tapering.
It is also helpful to think about what the effects of QE have been and whether these will reverse as QE is withdrawn. Initially QE was expected to lead to price inflation, this has certainly not happened in terms of consumer prices but we might have had deflation without it. More likely the asset price inflation that we have seen in the investment markets (stocks and bonds) does seem to have been driven by QE. The likely impacts of unwinding QE on asset prices have been covered above.

All businesses need to think through the impacts on their company directly and the second & third level effects on customers, suppliers, employees and other stakeholders. Having a plan which deals with the uncertainties will be important.

This was written by Steve Sampson, a Commercial FD with over 25 years’ experience in business and first published at http://goo.gl/WQpuAr.

Thursday, 9 January 2014

Press Release 9th January 2014 - Steve Sampson joins FD eXcel

Steve Sampson joins FD eXcel

FD eXcel, the recently launched UK FD consulting group, is delighted to announce the appointment of Steve Sampson, the latest Finance Director to join the team.

Steve spent 25 years with Alliance Boots and its predecessor companies in a variety of senior finance roles both operationally focused, and creating and leading the group finance function. He completed in excess of 100 acquisitions as the international group established itself as a global giant. Steve now brings this world class experience to the team at FD eXcel offering their services to the SME market.

Commenting on joining the team Steve says, “Having successfully acquired many companies into a rapidly growing group and ensuring they are integrated with minimal disruption to customers has given me extensive experience that will be invaluable to the clients of FD eXcel. My diverse skill set will add value to clients in the areas of business planning, finance models, financial and strategic advice, business performance improvement and of course successful acquisitions and exits.”

FD eXcel was formed in 2013 as a group of consulting, part time Finance Directors joined forces to deliver “best in class” services to the SME market. For many SME’s, to employ a Finance Director is a huge cost which many cannot afford. FD eXcel can alleviate this heavy cost for its clients by offering the services of highly experienced commercial FD's at a fraction of the cost of a full time FD.