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Having recently been appointed as Head of Banking at Interim Partners it is time to produce my first blog!
I wanted to use this initial blog to introduce myself, give a little background and talk briefly about the sector I will be working in.
I began my career at Deutsche Bank before spending almost five years with JP Morgan in London where I supported their structured finance business. That was in days when acronyms like CDO, SPV and so on were seen as innovative!
Following a period recruiting for the investment banking sector in Dublin I joined Albemarle Interim Management in London. Albemarle was, at the time, the leading supplier of interims in the retail and commercial banking market.
This was shortly after the financial crisis and involved working on extremely challenging but timely and interesting assignments such as those at Northern Rock, Lloyds/HBOS and Bank of England.
Having spent time out of sector I was lured back by the prospect of joining Interim Partners, an ambitious business but one which is determined to maintain a high standard of ethics in the way it does business. I will be based in London but also cover the Dublin market (6.30am flights are great!) so things should be busy in the year ahead.
Much has changed in London over the past couple of years but thankfully many of the same people are still in the market so it’s great to rekindle old connections. It would be interesting to get any thoughts on where you see the challenges and opportunities for the senior interim market in financial services for the year ahead.
Charles Geoghegan is Head of Banking for Interim Partners.
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February 21st, 2012 at 4:11 pm
Welcome Charles – shame my Dublin contract finished last week, we will not have the chance to sample and share the great food and wine in that fine city. Maybe London next.
Looking forward to continuing working with you and the team.
Best
Donald
p.s. Good luck on the Gherkin run!!
February 24th, 2012 at 8:14 am
Charles,
Good luck. Always good to see a fellow Geoghegan.
John
February 24th, 2012 at 8:15 am
Good luck from a fellow Geoghegan
February 24th, 2012 at 9:22 am
Best of luck Charles.
This is not a sector in which I have any great strength or depth of knowledge, as I am actually a business developer and interim director, however my last contract involved the development of a risk framework (as a go to market proposition) to help financial institutions understand and manage issues of risk. As such, I became very aware of the time pressures relating to BASEL, SOL and RDR and how a framework approach could help organisations manage and mitigate risk.
The proposition I developed was called FLOW:Coherence, FLOW for Facets, Logistics, Operations and Workload which are the four areas of risk on the enterprise i.e what are the facets of risk, what is the impact on logistics, what operational challenges do we face and what will be the impact on our current workload? The framework allowed for a coherent management of risk issues across the enterprise, hence FLOW:Coherence.
As for lessons learned during this 9-month contract, I would say financial institutions have the value of risk model the wrong way around. They see regulation as something they have to comply to, instead of something that could be a differentiator. Unfortunately instead of looking outward as to how regulation could help them to win more business and to effectively lend more, they see it as a child sees a parent scolding them for leaving their toys scattered around a room. This creates petulance, and for a period at least, a push back against the system.
What we are seeing in the public domain is the effect of this, for example, banks failing to lend under Project Merlin as agreed, whilst blaming the issue on increased regulation preventing lending. The government/public reaction to this position is to have a dig at the bonus culture and to chastise banks for what appear to be poor performances, whilst ignoring the actual significant restructuring that banks are carrying out to remain competitive in a global market.
We are in a negative spiral currently, with banks having their hands tied by governments and governments creating market risk through sovereign debt problems and the voting populations demanding more regulation and control which the politicians react to and push back onto the banks.
I believe that banks need to make risk mitigation a strategic aim, something that they aspire to be excellent at and can communicate to the markets and the public as one of their core principles. This means they have to get closer to their customers and understand more of their markets and seek longer term but more stable and assured returns. They need to embrace the opportunity to differentiate themselves in a turbulent and doubtful market, a safe harbor in stormy seas perhaps.
This is not a new model for banks, the co-operative have been running a scheme along these lines for some time and it has worked well for them, albeit more ethically motivated than risk driven.
Best of luck in your role.
Rob.
February 28th, 2012 at 12:23 pm
Charles
I think you will find the management and restructuring of bank debt will be the next major challenge. The ability to take highly leveraged operating companies through complex restructuring and return them to genuine growth will be the challenge for Interim Specialists. I see many organisations putting off the challenge by injecting more equity into underperforming management teams with rollover loans from distressed banks.
Best of luck in your new role
Steve
February 28th, 2012 at 2:25 pm
Thanks Donald.
Thanks John, there are not many of us out there!
Thanks Robert, agree that this is a huge area for banks going forward and also that for government owned banks there are even more issues to be considered.
I think banks will need to be more comfortable with defining their own risk (as opposed to regulatory compliance) appetite and therefore level and speed of reward.