Sarah Walker, KPMG, talks about returning to UK
Sarah Walker, a director of financial services deal advisory at KPMG, returned to Leeds and her Yorkshire roots last year. It’s been a long road back, she tells Jo Russell, as she details her role upon returning to the UK, what she learned as COO and her plans for the future.
Did your ACA qualification act as a passport?
In 2003, I qualified as an ACA with KPMG in Leeds. The following year, I moved to Australia to work in audit at the Sydney office. There I honed my skills in banking, and then in international financial services transactions. In 2010, I was asked to support the London team, but in Hong Kong, on the Prudential-AIA merger (which was subsequently aborted). A lot was happening in the UK market – I helped support one business’s bid for the acquisition of the Lloyds TSB branch network in 2011.
I could see that in the sector where I worked there was a lot of great experience that I could gain from working back in London. I built good relationships and was able to make the move. One of the mantras I live by is “treat people the way you want to be treated”. Relationships are so important – you never know where someone will crop up again.
What was your role when you returned to the UK?
I moved to London and into financial services deal advisory in January 2012 and was subsequently promoted to director. In September 2018, I had the opportunity to be the interim COO of deal advisory in London. I reported to the head of the division, oversaw the finance and HR aspects of the business, implemented and monitored strategy. I wasn’t client-focused but grappled with what most business owners deal with. It was a highly demanding role, as I looked after a lot of different areas, but it wasn’t deal or event-driven and was more predictable. That gave me the space to plan my relocation to Leeds.
What did you learn as COO?
Every business has different challenges. The one consistent thing is that running a business is not a part-time job. Doing a deal while running a business day to day is very difficult. Grappling with some of those same concerns helped me understand the position of our clients more. Talking to clients who were implementing IT projects, for example, meant that we could share war stories. But I wasn’t just learning – I brought my previous experience to the role too. Coming from a deal environment enabled me to shape and prioritise tasks as COO.
What was it like returning to your roots in Yorkshire?
In July 2019, I moved to Leeds and back into financial services deal advisory. I’m bumping into a lot of familiar faces, including people I knew when I was training. They are now CFOs of businesses rather than the accountants. This returns to the theme that relationships are so key. Some big financial services names have gone from Yorkshire (like Bradford & Bingley), but there are plenty of new financial services businesses – the market is very buoyant. People think of London as the hub, which it is, but there are so many exciting financial services businesses around here.
How does the challenge differ to working in London?
The biggest challenges are awareness and prioritising of businesses in the sector. There are so many businesses out there – how on earth do you meet them all, and in what order? I’d love to have conversations with more businesses where I can share market insights and show how we could support growth beyond their current anticipation. Another issue is infrastructure outside London. Travel from York to Manchester takes almost the same amount of time as from York to London. It’s definitely a challenge to get around.
Your plans for the future?
I want to build our business, build the team, and take people with me who can really support the financial services community outside London. People in the regions want to talk to people in the regions. No matter how complimentary it may feel having someone travel up from London to see them, they naturally question how much understanding there is if their business doesn’t sit in the Square Mile. I want to support financial services businesses with the full range of deal considerations and market insights. People are running great businesses here, and we can help them move that dial even further.
This article originates from the Corporate Financier March 2020 edition. The magazine is exclusively available to ICAEW Corporate Finance Faculty members.