There are too few CFOs who progress up to the CEO role in our opinion. Andrew Gale was one of the latest exceptions when he stepped up to be the Group Chief Executive of evo in December 2022 after eight years as the Group CFO.

We have known Andrew for over twenty years. We have seen how highly regarded he has been by his team, peers, investors and advisors. We were delighted when we learned of his move to the CEO role and were just as pleased when he agreed to share some of his story with us.

Andrew’s career summary:

• Trained in audit for ACA qualification with Deloitte in London and passed the US CPA exam while on secondment in the US.
• Three roles over seven years with English, Welsh & Scottish Railways (now DB Cargo) as Head of Internal Audit, Head of Group Finance and Group Chief Accountant.
• Joined Vasanta (now evo) in 2008 as Group Financial Controller. He progressed to the Group Finance Director role in 2010, and CEO in 2022. evo, the UK and Ireland’s largest specialist multi-channel business supplies and service distributor, has been an Endless investment since July 2009 with 2,020 people. Turnover is currently £530m

Please tell us about your career journey and how you rose to become the CEO of evo.

After obtaining a first-class BA in Economics at Lancaster University, I was lucky enough to secure funding to extend my studies at Warwick, where I obtained an MSc in Economics, but I realised that was enough of academia (at least for a while). Not really being sure what to do next I stumbled into a role with Deloitte Leeds as a trainee auditor. Success in my first-year exams, and a chance conversation with a Deloitte London manager over a beer, led me to move to London, doubling my salary to £15k and giving me a chance to enjoy life in the big city, living in Tooting with a friend who had recently moved to London as a trainee lawyer.

I qualified as an ACA with Deloitte and have a lot to thank them for - I gained some excellent base audit work experience on clients like GEC, Hays and Racal, before heading off on secondment to Boston, USA. While working crazy hours, I managed to obtain the US CPA qualification and I met my wife, my best man, and gained a group of international and US friends we are still in contact with today. My wife was the Marketing Manager for the Deloitte Boston office, and I rescued her to ultimately enjoy life in Yorkshire. We have just celebrated our 25-year anniversary.

I moved back to London and worked even crazier hours for Deloitte on GEC and Vodafone’s acquisitions and US listings before moving into industry to work for Spirent (a telco multinational). Another US listing and more acquisitions followed before we escaped London and headed North.

Next it was EWS (rail freight) in Doncaster and an entry role as the Head of Internal Audit. This role was a fantastic move for me and where I first recruited Jon Maxted, my current CFO, and I’ve been “ruining” his working life ever since!  After an entertaining eighteen months, the Finance Director observed of me “You have created enough grief for everyone else, it is now time to have some of your own!”. This resulted in a Chief Accountant role essentially with responsibility for the AP and AR teams and the financial numbers. Jon moved into the numbers team shortly thereafter. EWS then decided to consolidate the finance function into Doncaster, and we built a decent finance team in the process. It was a good grounding, working with a good CFO, Patrick Butcher - and working with some high-quality finance professionals. A process to market/sell the business followed and the completion of that transaction with DB (nice people) meant it was time to look for the next challenge.

I was approached to join evo, in Sheffield, and I interviewed with Richard Martin, Chief Exec, and Mark Johnston, CFO. Frankly the level of banter between them convinced me to make the move.  While the business was going through a challenging period, I thoroughly enjoyed working for them both – Richard was exceptionally bright, which led to many well natured challenging conversations, often well past normal hours, and Mark was probably the best man-manager I’ve worked for with a sharp sense of humour. An entry role as Group Controller, turned into a CFO role and now a Chief Executive role, and what was supposed to be a quick turnaround to make a few £’s became a 15-year journey.

Tell us about the step up from being CFO to CEO.

There are a lot of benefits in being the finance leader and then stepping up to be CEO – you know the people, the suppliers, the customers, the bankers, the shareholders. In a PE owned business, it is these folks who decide on the next CEO, and you have a relationship with them, which external candidates do not.

I should be clear though – I didn’t set out to become a CEO. It was more a case of having learned the company, learned from two different previous CEO’s that it was the right time and the right move for us all. There are different types of CEO and at this point it is right that I carry the baton - the business needed a CEO who knew the business, knew the shareholder, and had the strong financial skills needed to capitalise on opportunities. While I’m doing the role though – I will do it as I see fit and make the calls as I see them.

In evo we work as a team. My first question to my leadership team was “do you want to do the job, because it is ok to say no?” Some changes followed but for every departure there has been a promotion or a new recruit. My philosophy from my first time leading a team has not really changed – Do I have the right leader? Right team? Right process? Then you support but give folks space to do their job and resist the temptation to do it for them. When I took over the evo team needed a refresh and I’m pleased with the results. We’ve now got a Trading Board that are confident, and we have alignment between me, my top team, and the wider Senior Leadership team. I’m bringing through the next generation and if folks make mistakes, that’s fine (my fault). We are all aligned though, and we are up for the challenge of the day.

So for now, I’m the right man to lead and my knowledge of the business and finance background helps, but in other organisations the need might be for a sales or logistic background. It is about “fit” and “timing”.

You also need to ensure you are ready for the job. I recommended my predecessor for the CEO role the last time the role came up. At the time – his sales background and my finance skills were the best fit as an Exec team, now with a broader commercial skillset under my belt through years learning from quality Board members and business leaders, it is my time.

I do think finance professionals have to think about their career development. Do not sit in a job where you are not learning anything new. Think about the skills you need to acquire – there is no set order you have to do things in but do not get into a rut, move. There is a strong, traditional flow to my career journey, but I have consciously tried to broaden my experiences with each new role. I started at Deloitte, which developed base auditing /financial skills. I worked on clients – big and small – I worked in different locations. I worked on audits/acquisitions/disposals/listings etc.  The move into industry was about becoming a good commercial accountant and widening my experiences. I personally found I enjoyed being part of a team making something happen rather than an external auditor, but it is horses for courses. If you don’t give it a go though, you’ll never know.

In many ways the leap to CFO is the key step. This opens the door to “move out of the finance box”. In my case, managing Property was a first step. Responsibility for IT, HR, Legal and other back-office functions followed. As a CFO you get involved in customer and supplier terms/contracts/tenders etc. I think making yourself accessible and approachable to everyone in the management team along the way strengthens your skillset and profile – and opens you up to further opportunities, while making you the commercial counsellor in the business.

Even if you really enjoy your job, it is important to continually look at broadening your strengths. I have known people who are experts in their niche areas and passionate about what they do. That is great for day-to-day fulfilment, but the problem comes if they get bored or if they are forced to look for a change – every finance professional should guard against being a ‘one-trick pony’. A future CFO does not need to look far to come up with a tick list of skills that make up a strong CFO’s CV – technical finance, commercial finance and M&A are at the top of the list.

I consider myself lucky in a sense – I have been in the right place at the right time, but I have made some of that luck though the skills I’ve developed and the relationships that I have built along the way. This is why I was ready when this CEO opportunity presented itself and why I was ready to do the job.

There has been no such thing as “standing still” at evo in your time there. How have you managed to balance long term planning & leadership with changing events?

I am definitely not a nine-to-five person, I would hate a role where you are constantly wishing your life away or you have to work in the same place, day after day. I am, however, working on banning meetings or calls before 0900 (they are just not right), but I’d happily work well past midnight. A legacy from my student and Deloitte days.

The headlines of what gives me job satisfaction are:

• Fixing things
• Helping develop people and building successful teams.
• Hitting targets and deadlines.

I’ll give you a little example - I overheard one of my young managers telling his boss that he’d just presented to the evo Board for the first time. It had gone well, and he was clearly proud of himself. I just smiled to myself – oh to be that young! Developing and bringing folks through is all part of my responsibility while I’m the steward of the business.  

Ultimately as the CEO, my performance will be judged by the financial performance of the Company. In year 1, we have delivered a record EBITDA. We have won business, pushed through inflation into our pricing, improved our stock fill rates and I’ve reduced the cost base (yes, you have to do hard things as a CEO). As a result of the improvement in our financial performance, all employees received a pay increase and lots of folks hit their bonus targets. So the employees are happier, the shareholder is happy, but this is a results business. Season 1 went really well; I need to do better in Season 2.

You have been successful in developing your team, setting high standards and keeping loyalty. What have been the secrets to achieving this?

I am not sure there any secrets or magic skills in developing effective teams and winning folks’ loyalty.

I am old fashioned and believe that you must lead by example. I work hard, long hours, I treat people fairly, I give straight answers to questions and I’m fine if you don’t like my answer. I work with adults and expect them to act like adults.

I believe in giving people opportunities, but I expect a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay.

I like working with teams. I like fixing things. I like breaking problems into bite size chunks.

I am looking to bring in bright school leavers and bright graduates to complement our experienced team. I accept that there are times when we will need to recruit a specific skillset – say a lawyer, but we are recruiting a person. Do they have the drive and right attitude that will complement our team?

If we have the right leader, the right team and they are following the right process then you just need to give folks space to do their jobs. I do not believe in compensating, by doing somebody’s job for them. If you’ve got it wrong – make a change.

I encourage folks to tell me if I’ve got it wrong. Disagreeing is fine, just do it in the proper way. A good debate that leads to a better decision is a good outcome.

We noticed the launch of evo Foundation in your first year as CEO – an independent charity with some very strong community purposes. Tell us how this came to happen. How much of a responsibility does the business sector have to ESG and creating value outside of shareholder returns?

Following the sale of EWS, a foundation was set up using some of the proceeds to provide educational support for folks working in the rail industry. One of my former colleagues reminded me about this a few months ago and that started the thought. Could I do the same thing at evo?

So we went through the regulatory process, appointed Trustees etc and made it happen. One of my colleagues, Steve Smith, our Warehouse Director, had previously done a cross-county sponsored walk so the thought of walking between the evo sites crystallised into a 274 mile 'Walk of evo'.

The staff who got involved really enjoyed it, the PR is good, and we’ve raised £35k for education/hardship support with our first event.

I think every business has a responsibility to contribute and hopefully the evo Foundation can be a focal point for us. We’ve lots of folks who want to get involved and are keen to make a difference. Hopefully they can have some fun as well.

If this also helps us evidence that we are a responsible good corporate citizen, then brilliant. We do our best.

Details of the next evo Foundation event will be announced soon and hopefully we can raise a lot more money in 2024.

The technology curve is rising increasingly steeply. How do you see this affecting the accounting sector and finance departments over the next 10 years?

It was not too many years ago that I was an Audit Junior carrying around a 'laptop' that was the size of a planet and weighed a ton. So much has evolved since then and there is no doubt that it will continue to do so at an even faster pace.

Automation and AI are coming, whether folks like it or not. The smart people will embrace it now and will have already taken their first steps. The business headlines for me are that this automation will reduce costs and increase the speed of processes, and this should also manifest itself in a better customer or supplier experience.

I think every organisation needs to think about how far to go – we value human interaction with our customers and suppliers, and I always want somebody to be able to talk to a real person.

What would be your advice for young people considering an accounting qualification at the start of their careers?

Simple – do it, accounting is a great entry point into business.

I was the first member of my family to attend university and pursue a career with a professional qualification. As you guys know from recruiting for me and knowing what I look for in candidates, I place a lot of value on academic and business qualifications.

All the accounting qualifications, from AAT to ACA, can form the basis for successful careers. My advice to young people is not to think of them as accounting qualifications, but business qualifications. If you’re going to study though, study hard and get good grades.

One of the biggest decisions for many accountants is whether they stay in practice or leave for industry. There is no right or wrong answer and no blueprint for everyone to follow. This is a very personal decision, and my advice would be to choose the employer who is giving you most opportunities. That should always be at the top of the list for every career decision.

Grab the opportunities when they come to you and prioritise broadening your skills at every inflexion point. Yes – the salary and the working pattern needs to be right, but are they more important than how you are going to develop yourself?