Chief Financial Officer of the Year Tim Williams — MainfreightThe consummate CFO

Date04 December 2020
AuthorTamsyn Parker
Published date04 December 2020
Publication titleNew Zealand Herald, The (Auckland, New Zealand)
It is those skills which have helped him take out the award for Chief Financial Officer of the Year at the 2020 Deloitte Top 200 awards.

Williams has held the role of CFO for Mainfreight since 1996 and says thinking long term is critical for the business.

“We call ourselves a 100-year company. We don’t make short term decisions we make them for the long term.”

Williams says good communication is also vital. “In a business like ours you have got 260 branches and you have got to be able to communicate with them at all levels ... not just a few technical people within the team of accountants. I think that is really quite key.”

Strong communication has been even more important this year with the challenges associated with Covid-19. “We operate in 26 countries and each experience has been different. You have got the New Zealand experience which is in hindsight is pretty good. We have got European and American offices which are in tougher environments where our team have to work from home a lot more than we currently do.

“Just trying to understand how those different experiences, how we put it all together and see how it is going to operate and work — that is really key.”

Williams said it was good to see the systems the company already had in place enabled him to keep a finger on the pulse and make adjustments as and when needed as the country went through the various lockdown levels.

“That has been the biggest challenge this year but it has been an interesting challenge — you wouldn’t say you enjoy it, but it is stimulating, is a good way to describe it.”

Williams says his biggest success this year has been helping steer the business through the Covid-related challenges.

“It shows we have developed the culture and systems in Mainfreight to not just survive in times of crisis but to actually thrive which is a bit of a cliche I know. But in the past, we have had earthquakes, bushfires, the GFC and now Covid.

“Before Covid I thought I had seen most things. But this was a new one. It was really great to see systems — we do weekly profit reporting so we could really tell how things were trending very quickly in all those branches, in all those countries how things were changing and how we could make decisions with good information.”

It was not just the economics of the business and the sustainability but the safety of all the team that came into play. “We have come out the other side looking pretty good.”

Williams said the company had managed to increase its...

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