Motivation and fit

The straightforward answer is that the job I was hired to do is done. I joined a private equity backed software business in Amsterdam as CFO five years ago. The brief was to get it ready for sale: clean up revenue recognition, build proper reporting and lead the process. We sold it to a larger trade buyer last year at about 14 times EBITDA.

Under the new owner, finance is being folded into their group function. My role is becoming a country finance director with a reporting line to a group CFO in Paris. That's a perfectly good job, but it's mainly reporting and integration, and it isn't what I'm best at or what I want to spend the next five years doing.

I've been open with the new owners about it, and they've asked me to stay through the integration, which finishes in March. So there's no rush on my side, and I'm being selective.

What I'm looking for is another business with an owner who has a clear value creation plan and needs a CFO to drive it. A second exit, ideally at larger scale. Your situation, with a new sponsor and a hold period of four or five years, is very close to that.

Over the next three to five years, I want to run a business end to end. Right now I'm COO of a regional freight forwarding business based in Singapore. I run operations across six countries, about 1,800 people, but commercial and finance sit with other people. I've learned a lot from that, but I've never owned a full P&L.

So my goal is a general management role with full P&L accountability, ideally a CEO or divisional MD role, and I'd like to do it in a business that's growing rather than one that needs fixing.

What I find interesting here is that this role is a genuine step towards that, and you've been open about it. The COO here also runs the contract logistics unit as its own P&L, about SGD 300 million of revenue, which is big enough to be properly tested.

There's a people goal in there too. I want to build a team that can run without me. In my current role I'd say two of my direct reports could step into my job tomorrow, and I'd like that number to be higher wherever I go next.

If in five years I'm running a division or a business of your scale, I'll be happy.

Three things, really. The first is a leadership team that will actually make decisions. I'm Head of Strategy at a consumer brands group in New York, and I've learned that strategy work is only as good as the willingness at the top to choose. In a previous role I spent a year on a portfolio review that was never acted on, and I don't want to do that again.

The second is a business with a clear reason to grow. Not necessarily fast, but with a real plan for where the next phase of growth comes from. I'm at my best helping work out how to get there, not managing decline.

The third is a place where strategy sits close to the money. I want to be involved in the M&A and the capital allocation, not just the slides. In my current role I've led the work on four acquisitions totalling about $600 million, and that's the part I've enjoyed most.

From what I've read and from our conversations so far, you meet all three. You've said you want two bolt-on acquisitions in the next two years, and your CEO was very clear about the choices you've already made, including exiting the wholesale channel. That's what drew me.

Okay, likes first. I like being involved early. I'm General Counsel of a listed business services group in London, and the CEO brings me into deals before the term sheet, not after, which makes my job much more useful. Second, I like the team. I've built a legal and company secretarial team of 14, and they're very good. Third, the variety. In the last year alone I've dealt with an acquisition in Germany, a data breach and an activist shareholder.

On dislikes, the first is the time that goes into reporting for its own sake. We produce a monthly legal risk report of about 40 pages, and I'm not convinced anyone reads past page three. I've proposed replacing it with a one-page dashboard.

The second is that the business is quite decentralised, so I sometimes hear about contracts after they've been signed. We've tightened the approval rules, but it's still a gap.

The third is less about the job and more about the stage the company is at. We're in a period of consolidation and cost-cutting, and I miss building things. That's partly why I'm talking to you.

None of these make me unhappy. They're just the trade-offs of the role.

Honestly, it's the speed of decision-making. I'm Supply Chain Director for the consumer division of a diversified group based in Kuala Lumpur. The division turns over about RM 2 billion, but the bigger decisions go to a group investment committee that meets once a quarter and also covers property, plantations and hotels.

For example, last year we had a strong case to consolidate three warehouses into one automated distribution centre, with a payback of under four years. It took eleven months to get approved, mostly waiting for committee slots, and in that time construction costs went up by about 12 per cent.

I understand why it works that way. It's a family-controlled group with a lot of businesses, and the family wants to see the big commitments. And I've learned to work with it. I now take proposals to the group CFO months ahead, and where I can, I break projects into phases that fall within divisional authority.

But it does mean the pace is slower than I'd like. One of the things that appeals about this role is that you're a single-sector business, and the decision rights sit much closer to the operating team.

Probably the first year of systems work. From what you've told me, the business is running on three different ERP systems after the acquisitions, and month-end close takes fifteen working days. Somebody has to sort that out, and realistically it'll take a big chunk of the CFO's time in year one.

It's not the part I'd choose. I'm most useful on capital allocation, funding and working with the board on strategy, and a systems consolidation is heavy, detailed and often thankless. I'll also be honest that I've led one before, as Finance Director of a retailer here in Cape Town, and it ran four months over plan.

But I understand why it matters. You can't raise the next round of funding or do the next acquisition with a fifteen-day close and numbers nobody fully trusts. So I'd treat it as a priority, not a distraction.

What I'd do differently from last time is bring in a strong programme lead from the start, rather than running it myself alongside the day job. And I'd set a target of a seven-day close within eighteen months and report against it to the board every quarter, so it doesn't drift.

Can I check what you see as the biggest difference? I'd guess it's less the size and more the fact that it's founder-led, and the pace that comes with that. If that's right, then I'd answer it this way.

I've spent the last eight years at a multinational consumer goods company, most recently as HR Director for the Nigerian business, about 2,600 people. Everything there has a policy, a framework and a global template. Here, from what I've seen, decisions are made quickly by a small group around the founder, with very little process.

I don't see that as a problem, but I'd have to adjust. Earlier in my career I spent three years at a fast-growing local bank in Lagos, about 400 people when I joined, and the first thing I learned was that if you turn up with a 40-page policy deck, you lose people within a week.

So in the first ninety days I'd do three things. Spend real time with the founder to understand how he makes people decisions and what he values. Fix one or two things that are clearly causing pain, probably pay consistency and onboarding, quickly and simply. And hold back on the big frameworks until I'd earned the right.

The multinational experience becomes useful later, when you're at 1,500 people and need some structure. Just not in month one.

It depends on the type of work, and I'm quite deliberate about splitting it. I'm Head of Investments at a multi-asset manager in Hong Kong, running about US$4 billion with a team of eleven.

The thinking work I do best alone. When I'm forming a view on a position or reviewing a big allocation decision, I block out mornings, I read, I build my own numbers and I don't take calls. I've found that if I go into a group discussion without my view written down, I get pulled towards whoever speaks first.

But decisions I want to make in a group, and a challenging one. Our investment committee is five people, and I deliberately include our most sceptical portfolio manager, because she catches things I miss. We've avoided at least two bad positions in the last couple of years because of her.

Day to day, I like being on an open floor with the team. I sit with them rather than in an office, because I pick up a lot from hearing how they talk about markets.

From what you've described, this role involves more committee work and team leadership, and less running money myself, than I do now. I'm comfortable with that, as long as I can protect some time to think.

Sure, and stop me if I've got anything wrong. You're a listed logistics group headquartered here in Rotterdam, and in simple terms you make money in three ways. The biggest is contract logistics: running warehouses for retailers and manufacturers on multi-year contracts. That's about 55 per cent of revenue and the most stable part. Then there's road freight across northern Europe, which is lower margin and more cyclical. And the smallest but fastest growing part is cold chain, mainly for pharmaceuticals and food.

From the last two annual reports, the strategy looks like shifting the mix towards contract logistics and cold chain and away from pure freight. You sold the French trucking business last year, which fits that.

The challenge, as far as I can see, is that contract logistics is very competitive on price, and renewals are where you lose margin. Your last results presentation mentioned that renewal margins were down about a point.

Which I think is why this role exists. If I've understood it right, you want a Commercial Director who can sell on service and value rather than price, particularly in cold chain. Is that a fair reading?

I think about it at three levels. The first is the obvious one: did the business deliver what we said it would? I'm COO of a private healthcare group in Melbourne, and at the start of each year we commit to a short list of numbers: revenue, margin, patient satisfaction and staff turnover. Hitting those is the baseline.

The second is whether the improvements stick. Anyone can push a number for twelve months. I look at whether things are still better two or three years later. For example, we cut average theatre turnaround time from 42 minutes to 28 in 2022, and it's still at 27 today. That tells me we changed how people work rather than just leaning on them.

The third is the people. I'd consider it a failure if I left and things fell apart. So one of my own measures is how many of my direct reports could step into my role, and how many senior appointments we fill from within. Last year it was four out of six.

From our conversations, I think you'd judge this role in a similar way. You said you wanted someone who'd leave operations stronger, not just hit this year's budget.

I use a mix of hard measures and feedback, and I try not to rely on how I feel the year has gone. I'm CFO of a mining services business in Toronto, and each January I agree four or five objectives with the CEO and the audit committee chair. This year they include cutting working capital by CAD 40 million, completing our refinancing and getting month-end close down to six days. They're specific, so there's no arguing about whether I've hit them.

On top of that I do two things for myself. Every quarter I check our forecast accuracy, because if my numbers are wrong, the board's decisions are wrong. We aim to be within 3 per cent at the half year, and I track it.

And once a year I run an anonymous feedback round with my team and my peers on the executive committee. Ten questions, five minutes. Two years ago it told me my team felt I second-guessed their work too much, which I hadn't realised. I changed how I review, moved sign-off to my deputies for most items, and the scores on that question went up a long way last year.

The formal review matters, but by the time it comes round, I want to know the answer already.

I believe most legal teams review too many things. The standard view is that legal should check every contract above a threshold, and that more review means less risk. I think it often means more delay, a bottleneck, and a business that stops thinking about risk because it assumes legal will catch it.

I'm General Counsel of a regional technology services group in Singapore. When I joined three years ago, legal reviewed every customer contract over SGD 50,000. That was about 1,400 contracts a year, with an average turnaround of eleven days. The sales team hated us, and honestly, most of those reviews added nothing.

So we changed the model. We built standard templates with pre-approved fall-back positions, trained the sales leads to use them, and now we only review contracts that go outside those positions. Volume through legal fell by about 70 per cent. Turnaround on what we do see is down to three days. And in three years, we haven't had a single material dispute on a contract that went through the self-service route.

I do accept the other side has a point. It only works if you invest in the templates and the training, and you need good data on what's being signed. But I'd defend the principle to most General Counsel I know.

Two things at the moment. The main one is data centre economics. I'm Head of Investments for an infrastructure fund in Mumbai, and data centres are becoming one of the biggest themes in our pipeline, but they don't behave like our usual assets. The value is really driven by power availability and the tenant contracts, and I didn't understand the power side well enough.

So for the last six months I've been working through it properly. I've done a short executive programme on energy markets, I spent two days at an operating site in Navi Mumbai with their chief engineer, and every few weeks I meet a power trader I know to ask the basic questions I'd be embarrassed to ask in a deal meeting. It's already changed how we screen deals. We turned one down last quarter because the grid connection timeline didn't add up.

The second is more personal. I'm learning the piano, at 46, which is humbling. I mention it because it's taught me something about learning as an adult: I improve fastest with a teacher who corrects me every week, not by watching videos. I've taken the same idea to work, so I now ask a colleague to pick apart my investment papers before they go to committee.