CFO
NewBridge pharmaceuticals
Total years of experience :30 years, 7 Months
- Works with CEO and other Executives to drive strategic growth for the business.
- Worked closely with the CEO and bankers to raise $48m capital.
- Secured a USD 18M debt financing to the company through extensive deal negotiation and supervision of the financial modelling exercise and satisfactory Due Diligence exercise conducted by the bank.
- Supports NPI (New Product Introduction), ensuring strategic pricing and ROI.
- Enabled geographical expansion by establishing legal entities in Turkey and Egypt with optimized tax structure.
- Led the VAT implementation project by assessing the business impact and ensuring 100% compliance with the law
- Built Finance and Supply Chain organization capabilities from headcount of 2 to 14 employees.
- Initiated long range IT planning to support all business functions and implement new technology.
- Led due diligence exercise for investment in a manufacturing facility in the GCC.
- Set up the company financial planning function and ensured robust planning process.
- Introduced monthly S&OP meetings to review performance KPIs and address operational issues.
- Created and maintains, a robust financial reporting system that monitors company performance vs. plans, proposing and executing corrective measures as necessary.
- Played major role in establishing company compliance policies and SOPs. Sits on compliance committee.
- Obtained an unqualified audit report for the years audited 2008 to 2015.
- Maintains excellent relationships with banks; secured working capital financing from HSBC and Citi bank at a very competitive interest rate.
- Earned the CEO excellence award and the Best Functional Team award for 2016
- Sits in Board of Directors meetings, presents to the board company performance and advise the board on major issues and needed corrective actions
- Provided leadership and partnership with the GM in establishing the financial strategies and goals
- Coordinated and monitored the preparation of the annual plans, update and strategic plans and played a major role in presenting the plan to Area and defending the region numbers.
- Monitored the overall company performance while keeping a close eye on the products/country profitability and addressed performance issues vs. plan/UPD/LBE/LRP through teaming up with the GM and the Commercial team. This has resulted in exceeding plans in three years in a row.
- Conducted negotiation with the Levant suppliers that resulted in commission reduction of 6% over a period of 4 years. Estimated increase in sales and profitability $1MM.
- Negotiated with the distributor in Iran a cash in advance payment term and secured corporate approvals. This helped in resolving frequent business interruptions in Iran and contributed in achieving the targets.
- Managed to reduce the company DSO from 150 to 130 days by targeting government accounts and increasing the follow-up on the outstanding balances
- Lead the negotiation with a third party manufacturer in Lebanon and secured a reduction in manufacturing charges. The result is a yearly saving of $75M in the cost of goods sold.
- Maintained procedures and controls that ensured the integrity of financial assets and accuracy of financial statements that led to a type one corporate audit report
- Initiated the IT long range plan needed to support all functions within Abbott Gulf & Levant and identified major initiatives needed to support the business growth.
- Managed relationship with distributors and made sure that all business deals are mutually profitable
- Headed the Solvay integration steering committee formed as a result of the Solvay acquisition and ensured integration targets and identified synergies are met.
- Won the 2011 Best Plan Book after competing with 40 affiliates across AAAME.
- Coordinated the preparation of the Annual Operating plan, Updates, LBE and Strategic plans
- Prepared a monthly variance analysis and highlighted performance issues vs plan and Updates along with contingencies
- Developed a monthly KPI’s reports to monitor the operation
- Exceeded the planning accuracy targets for NOPBT, CAPEX and OCF.
- Prepared all the Capital appropriation requests related to capacity expansion and new productions lines
- Evaluated the feasibility of the marketing initiatives and ensured and adequate ROI
- Played a major role in SAP implementation and ensured that SAP blueprints met business and control agenda and secured functional alignment on them
- Played a major role in establishing the project office in Qatar.
- Initiated the contact with the local authorities and obtained the necessary commercial register for the project office operation.
- Assessed the finance organization structure and recruited and developed the local vacant
- Prepared and Monitored the financial plans
- Managed the Financial reporting
- Formulated and maintained compliance with the financial policies and procedures
- Managed the preparation of the annual budget and created the appropriate tool for a monthly follow-up.
- Enhanced the monthly financial reporting package by introducing management reporting that shows profitability by brand, supplier and business unit.
- Conducted a shipment delivery pattern analysis and recommended to change the trade discount brackets to ensure an increase of the trucks capacity of utilization by 15%.
- Reviewed and enforced the change of Value Added Tax Treatment for the company which dramatically decreased the tax exposure.
- Analyzed the profitability of the cash van operation and a structural change to ensure profitable operation.
- Proposed based on the analysis of the cash van operation to shift the service of the self service stores under the pre-selling department. This has decreased the number of the cash vans by 6 and saved the company around USD 100K per year. In addition this has increased the number of the covered stores by 20%.
- Managed the relationship with the external and corporate auditors.
- Managed the relationship with the banks
- Ensured timely implementation of internal and external audit recommendations
- Redesigned the company chart of accounts which significantly increased the reliability and availability of data required for effective and fast decision making
- Reengineered the company reporting practices and introduced the management reporting concepts
- Highly contributed to Oracle Financial implementation (GL, AP, AR, FA, Inventory, PO)
- Proposed the control procedures over Free of Charges cases given to the trade through the help of a market audit conducted by a third party
- Unified the business process in the company remote warehouses
- Led the Value Added Tax compliance project and managed to get a positive assurance from PwC regarding VAT compliance
- Ensured timely implementation of internal and external audit recommendations
- Had a primary liaison with external and corporate auditors
- Managed and coached a team of 12 accountants.
- Managed the successful implementation of MFGPRO financial and manufacturing modules ( AR, AP, GL, Inventory, Purchasing, Fixed Assets and manufacturing)
- Managed the Financial reporting to the Head Office and maintained a clean Reporting Quality Control Sheet
- Contributed to the preparation of the annual operating plan
- Redesigned the company chart of account to be in compliance with the Unilever Standard Chart of Accounts
- Coordinated with EY for the preparation of Unilever Levant operating manual
- Communicated with the external and corporate auditors and had the responsibility of discussing, resolving and following-up on critical issues
- Recruited and developed and managed a team of 10 accountants
- Contributed in obtaining an Adequate Control Audit opinion in the 2 corporate audits.
- Performed task for the preparation and development of staff and lead operational audits.
- Wrote and prepared audit reports and programs and presented them to upper management.
- Participated in special investigations and reviews including fraud and bankruptcy, employee misconduct.