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Chris Jewell – Chief Financial OfficerChris Jewell – Chief Financial Officer©️ G&H

The Rest is History: an Up-and-close Conversation with Chris Jewell, Chief Financial Officer at G&H

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Chris Jewell’s many years of experience working in finance for engineering and manufacturing businesses has helped him navigate some of the challenges he had to face in his current role as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) at G&H. Operating in the complex landscape of G&H’s different markets and geographies, the Group’s Head of Finance has had to learn the art of managing expectations, whilst helping to guide the organization on the correct path to reach its ambitious targets. We sat down with Chris to understand more about his early career, how he sees the important role of CFO in a leading tech company in 2024, alongside his ambitions for G&H in the upcoming years.

Q: Chris, thank you for taking the time to have this conversation. Have you always been this involved with finance? How did you start your career in the field?

CJ: Interestingly enough, no, I haven’t always been this close to the financial sector. In fact, originally, my degree subject was modern history. When I finished my studies, I honestly had no idea what I was going to do, an experience many graduates go through, I think. But I had always been interested in businesses and the world of finance as a topic. So, after university, I decided to join an accountancy firm which I thought would be a good way of getting more general business experience and a good qualification.

For me, those early years were very formative because the environment requires you to think and work dynamically. The nature of the work then was very different from how it is now at G&H. For example, in an accounting firm, you deal with a client for 2-3 weeks, then move on to the next one. The advantage of that is you get to see a wide variety of companies and how they operate, which is exciting. I think that was what I enjoyed most about that job. One of my favorite clients at that time was Marshall Aerospace, a company that worked on large defense projects. When I decided to move out of the accountancy firm and into industry, I chose BAES as their projects felt similar to those I had worked on at Marshall, where engineers were developing very advanced products using the latest technologies. And since then, I have always worked in businesses that develop and manufacture products that are cutting edge, just like G&H. To do the finance job properly in those kind of companies you need to work with all the functions of the business, which is something else that makes the job so interesting. It never gets boring.

Q: How did you settle into your current role at G&H?

CJ: There are very many different aspects to the role. Finance encapsulates a variety of areas, and as you're growing in your career, you need to get a taste of each of them. To progress in finance and become a CFO, you need experience in all of those different subfields. Personally, I’ve always wanted to be a CFO, especially of a publicly traded company. That has always been my personal ambition. It’s the equivalent of an athlete reaching the Olympics, career-wise. In 2019 I was contacted by a recruiter about the CFO role at G&H as my predecessor had decided to step down and I was lucky enough to be selected by the Board.

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Q: What was the first project you undertook when you started as CFO for the company?

CJ: On the finance side of things, there was an opportunity to use our systems to make financial and other data more available to managers in the organization. With Jim Milkay, our Chief Information Officer, and his team we have built a suite of reports that gives people in the company access to information in a quick and reliable way to help them manage the business. Another area which needed some additional structure was what is often seen as the boring part of finance, specifically financial controls. We needed to update and standardize the financial controls that operate across our Group and make sure, on a regular basis, that those controls are working properly. That way, we protect the assets of the company and make sure that our financial results are accurate.

Q: How do you handle the pressure of delivering certain results, especially regarding external stakeholders?

CJ: Of course there is pressure to deliver results, especially from a high tech, IP-rich business. Our investors have certain expectations, which are understandable. Our responsibility as a leadership team is to convert that pressure into a series of actions that will turn G&H into the growing, profitable business that we all want it to be. Together with the rest of the executive team, my job is to try to keep us on that path, even though sometimes there are difficult priorities to call. For example, the areas we do and don’t invest in. I have always thought that good people in organizations want to do the right thing and support the company to succeed. It’s just in some cases, it is not clear how to do that. A really important job for finance is to help make that clear to the organization and show which of the choices we can make are likely to be the best for the business. If our people see the right direction to go in, I know they’ll try their hardest to get us there.

Q: Looking at the current evolution of the company, what are you excited to see happen?

CJ: I suppose since I'm a finance guy, my hope for G&H, for all of us, is to hit the improved financial results that we have promised our investors. I'm really looking forward to sitting in front of our big shareholders over the next 2-3 years and be able to show them that year-in, year-out, thanks to the team effort of everyone at G&H, we are making the business bigger and more profitable as we said we would do. I want to be able to say to them: we told you we were going to do it and we have done it. So, I am looking forward to seeing some healthy revenue and profit growth to get us back on track. Personally, I want to be part of an organization that we can all be proud of. That is ultimately what I would want to show everyone – how people making cool products in a fun place to work can also be very financially successful.