Leaders Insight - with Steve Hammell, Experienced CFO, Industrials & Technology markets

​The latest instalment of our “Leaders Insight” series is with Steve Hammell, experienced CFO in Industrials & Technology markets. In an insightful interview conducted by Michael Ball, Partner at The CFO Partnership, Steve shares his journey, the strategic initiatives he’s spearheading, and his vision for the future of finance.

Steve Hammell brings a wealth of experience and a unique perspective to his role at Pressure Technologies. With a career spanning over two decades in various financial leadership positions, Steve has navigated through numerous economic cycles and industry shifts. His expertise in mergers and acquisitions, financial strategy, risk management, and operational efficiency has been instrumental in driving the company’s growth and resilience.

Join us as we delve into Steve’s experiences, explore the evolving responsibilities of a CFO, and uncover what defines successful financial leadership in today’s environment.

What are both the best and the most challenging aspects of being the CFO of a fast paced, listed business?

• Best aspects;

• Supportive shareholders with capital to inject into the business, including the ability to provide innovative financing instruments (e.g. convertibles, quasi debt-equity instruments)

• High quality Boards with NEDs who bring in-depth experience and a steady hand.

• The public profile helps to attract and recruit high quality candidates and offer incentive structures not available in private companies.

• Challenging aspects;

• Everything plays out in the public domain, so the interplay of strategic projects and business performance need to be carefully handled.

• Short-term share price movements can become a barometer of success rather than progress against strategic objectives and long-term improvements to the business.

• Regulatory burdens are heavy and the costs of being listed can be prohibitive for any plc with revenue < £30m.

What are your opinions about the relationship between a CFO and CEO? What is critically important in building a successful partnership and providing the right support to the CEO?

• CEO and CFO must have each other’s back and provide a united front with all stakeholders, especially the Board, shareholders and employees.

• They should complement one another in terms of skills/expertise, leadership style and teamwork.

• Each needs to have strong leadership characteristics and deliver on their own responsibilities aligned to common strategic objectives.

• CFO needs to be the financial authority in the company and have command of the numbers, with the ability to simplify complex areas and deliver concise analysis for the CEO to use commercially.

• CFO should recognise that being CEO can be a lonely place with responsibility for almost every facet of the organisation. The CFO should be a strategic sounding- board and challenge the CEO regularly as an outspoken partner.

What new key skills or attributes do you think the next generation of CFO’s are going to need to develop?

• Technology;

• Cyber security is becoming a core competence and leadership responsibility of the CFO; ability to develop the cyber defence strategy of the company and work with internal and external resources to provide a robust operating framework and a response capability if the business is attacked.

• Ability to lead and deliver ERP and data analytics projects as Board sponsor.

• Ability to harness Artificial Intelligence and automation to deliver value to the business; in manufacturing, this translates to delivering full integration of manufacturing and financial data to drive operational improvement.

• Procurement;

• Supply chain integrity, performance and reliability has become a significant issue post-pandemic.

• CFOs need to be able to develop and lead high performance procurement functions to serve the business and manage operational and financial risk.

• People;

• The world of work has changed in the last 5 years with many competing pressures emerging. CFOs need to develop a core set of values to guide their recruitment decisions.

• CFOs need to develop high performance cultures by harnessing a broad range of skills across the increasingly integrated functions of finance, IT and procurement to deliver first class support to the business.

• CFOs should focus on big-picture priorities and determine what gets done, not how it gets done; CFOs should therefore prefer to empower their teams and encourage collaborative decision-making.

You have worked in some challenging turnaround environments in your career. What specifically are the most essential skills and personality traits that a finance leader needs to be able to steer a business through a turnaround project?

• Resourcefulness – CFOs must be able to draw on a broad array of skills and a network of dedicated advisors and funders to find their way through complex situations.

• Resilience and being strong-willed – CFOs must be acutely risk aware but be able to carry on regardless in a dark, uncertain and ambiguous situation where the route to success is not clear and the odds may be stacked against you; CFO’s need a plan B if things go wrong.

• Change management – turnarounds involve significant change for organisations and create new priorities, pressures and working relationships; CFO is normally in the eye of this storm.

Working patterns and individual priorities have never been as much at the forefront of working life as they are for people now. Is it possible to maintain a reasonable work life balance at C-suite or do you have to accept that there will be personal sacrifices in order to succeed at that level?

• C-suite responsibilities are time consuming, and you are usually dependent on the performance of others, which requires flexibility and ability to handle time pressure.

• However, by organising the activities of your internal and external teams, space can be created for your personal life, albeit at certain times the job has to come first.

You come from an advisory background yourself. How important is it to put time and effort into building and maintaining a network of trusted advisors that you can go to time and again?

• Developing long-term relationships of trust with CF advisors, lawyers, diligence providers, tax advisors and a range of debt and equity funders is critically important and enables a CFO to deploy the full suite of skills and expertise required.

• As a CFO, the businesses I have worked for have been employing not only myself but my entire network (whether they realised it or not!)

What is the one single best piece of advice you were given early in your career that still holds true today?

• Frame your career and skills in terms of the market you operate in and develop the flexibility to deploy those skills in new ways.

• For myself, I have served the Yorkshire M&A market for over 25 years in diverse roles including CF advisor, corporate banker and most recently CFO and have been able to re-invent myself a number of times using a core set of skills and relationships.

• Looking forward, I have ambitions to move into non-executive roles and expect the flexibility I have developed over the years to serve me well again.

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