Knowledge Hub

In our last newsletter, we raised some questions around the importance of building diverse boardrooms. It seems that we were picking at a thread close to your hearts as the response rate to our survey rose by over 55% and drew some interesting, motivating results. 50% of you rated the strategic leadership of your board as ‘good’ or ‘high’, while 80% of you felt that diversity in your boardroom is ‘poor’ or ‘non-existent’. On these findings alone, perhaps diversity isn’t as important as we think? Perhaps not, as only 20.6% of respondents disagreed that diversity was important to strong corporate governance. The ‘will’ amongst the senior professionals that we surveyed is there, but the question remains, how do we bridge the representation gap?

"Obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it." Michael Jordan

While the Australian economy celebrates 25 years of avoiding recession, and the US is on the road to being "Great" again, back in the UK we have enjoyed a far more rollercoaster like existence as we try to pick our way through an ever-shifting landscape. We have seen the fall, the rise and the stagnation of household names in business and financial services, dogged by scandal (think accounting black holes, PPI and Libor), buoyed by success stories (think Fever Tree, Metro Bank and HedgerWay). Then, we voted for Brexit, they voted for Trump and now, back home the youth have mobilised and made themselves heard.

We are a senior level financial recruiter. A newly formed business, born from over 35 years of experience, with ambitions to become the natural landing place for exceptional senior financial talent. We are launching against a backdrop of uncertainty, against a landscape dominated by Trump and his fake news, in the face of a constant dialogue of Post-Brexit Armageddon. Granted, we agreed to walk down this path while this all looked highly unlikely but we decided to pursue our dream and learned a few valuable lessons along the way.

As the demands of industry leaders evolve, the expectations placed on Chief Financial Officers have increased significantly too, and no longer are they purely responsible for the financial stewardship of a company.

Last month my dad celebrated 50 years with the same company. Having read hundreds of thousands of CVs over the past 17 years, it struck me just how unusual this was. In fact, I was with my last firm for 17 years, which also puts me in a distinct minority. That was until I decided to trust in my spiritual guru Michael Jackson and did indeed make that change.