2004 - 2006FINANCE MANAGER OF HILTON GATWICK AIRPORT HOTEL, UK
A 791 rooms 4 star property situated in the South Terminal of Gatwick airport. Operated by Hilton under a lease agreement with BAA PLC and a management agreement since November 05 with The Managed Hotel Trust
Head of a staff of 14 persons, reporting to hotel Director of Finance
Responsibilities andAchievements:
- Fully in charge of month end reporting, P&L, Head Office reporting and balance sheet reconciliation.
- Successfully improved management reporting, state of balance sheet as well as the accounting systems and procedures of the hotel.
- Improved significantly the Internal audit results since 2003, 90% of major issues and 50% of minor issues resolved, 1 best practice in Income identified.
- Designed a new revenue interface for the Income audit team so as to upload automatically the daily figures and statistics into the financial system.
- Assisted the management team to take costs reduction measures so as to limit the impact of the economic downturn on the organization (Project Purple). Hotel financial operating margins improved significantly over last 12 months (food cost dropped by 2%, Gross operating profit increased by 10% while conversion increased by 1pt through tighter payroll controls.
- Identified and develop a number 2 within the finance team in a year time.
- Involved in the 10 years capital plan expenditures, including preparing financial key assumptions relating to a £2500k project.
- Actively participated in the sales process of the Hotel by ensuring all procedures were followed during and after the sale, training the Finance team on resulting changes to their tasks, preparing relevant financial statements and acting as one of the key contacts with the Auditors.
Hilton London Metropole
- INTERNAL AUDITOR
2002 - 2004INTERNAL AUDITOR OF HILTON LONDON METROPOLE, UK
One of the largest Convention hotels in Europe with 1054 bedrooms, £50 Million turnover and extensive banqueting facilities. Fully owned by Hilton
1) Responsibilities and Achievements:
- In charge for improving all financial policies & procedures of this hotel and reporting directly to the Director of Finance, involving:
- Elaborated an audit plan to re-assess the compliance with the Hilton policies and procedures and suggest corrective actions to the Management
- Implemented improved systems with the support of all HOD’s and put Finance at the heart of operations by introducing a self-audit culture and several layers of control
- Ensure the consistency of systems via spot checks conducted by Finance team
- Designed exception reports and key indicators for all sections in Finance to support the Management in identifying at an early stage potential breakdowns in controls.
2)Achievements:
‘Satisfactory’ result from ‘requires improvement’ achieved within 3 months and a “Very good”Deloitte audit results one year later in the 2004 audit and several best practices rolled out in other Hilton Hotels. The ‘Very Good’ result was achieved by only 5 Hilton hotels worldwide in 04.
- Implementation of the Night Audit team (5 persons) and design of all systems and procedures as well as job tasks for all Auditors. Also responsible of all people management aspects of these Auditors.
PRICE WATERHOUSE COOPERS
- Consultant
1996 - 2002SENIOR CONSULTANT WITH PRICEWATERHOUSE COOPERS PARIS
Paris la Defence, second largest office worldwide with over 2000 consultants, focus on the audit, tax compliance and planning, and business advisory needs of middle market businesses.
Responsibilities and Achievements:
Assigned to missions for major international clients in the Leisure, IT, Media, Industrial, Transportation and Luxury industries (Euro Disney; IBM; Reuters; Schlumberger; Van Cleef; Fraikin; Pirelli; Convergis etc.)
• Key contact with the client: Managing day-to-day work relationship with clients; ensuring client satisfaction and completion of tasks within assigned deadlines.
• Managing project teams (2 to 6 people) including work planning of the team, Performance review, etc.
Main scope of missions:
• Legal Audit: Interim mission (Audit on the internal policy and procedures), Physical inventory, Final phases of Legal audit (Examination and validation of the annual financial statements according to the IAS and US GAAP)
• Special Audit Missions: Audit for Mergers and Acquisitions and due diligences, technical assistance in order to implement and develop a relevant control environment according to senior management instructions (all cycles: Revenue cycle, Payroll cycle, Treasury cycle, Expenditure cycle etc…)
