Three perspectives from CFO Kate Akery on business partnership, executive perspective and people. Finance has traditionally had a clear role in an organisation: managing financial performance, controlling risk and reporting the numbers. But as businesses become more complex, more transformed by technology and more dependent on decisions made under uncertainty, the role of Finance is also evolving. The question is no longer simply whether Finance can produce accurate numbers.

A few weeks ago, I joined Javier in a financial modelling and valuation programme delivered by IEB for the M&A teams at Exus Renewables. An experience I shared on LinkedIn, and one that left me with a conviction I would like to explore further here. The programme combined financial modelling fundamentals with an immersive acquisition simulation. Each team analysed renewable energy projects, built valuation models and decided which assets to acquire, and at what price. I playe

We tend to treat digital sovereignty as a matter for governments. The debate revolves around European regulation, public investment, critical infrastructure and geopolitical tension, with companies cast as bystanders who will eventually adapt to whatever framework emerges above them. That reading is misleading. Sovereignty is also decided in investment committees, at the moment an organisation selects a cloud provider, a collaboration platform, a security solution or an AI mo

For years, enterprise digital transformation revolved around a single keyword: the cloud. And with it, from the very start, an inseparable subject: security. Those who lived through those migrations remember the debates around hybrid architectures, access policies, and security by design in hosting infrastructures. It was never a secondary concern. It was already a question of control. Today, that chapter is largely behind us. Organizations have migrated their infrastructures

A reflection on what M&A failure rates might reveal about the way we think about mergers and acquisitions. There is a paradox that has increasingly caught my attention as I have been studying mergers and acquisitions. Over the past few decades, the discipline has become remarkably sophisticated. Valuation models have grown more advanced. Due diligence processes have become more comprehensive. Deal structures now allow for increasingly refined risk allocation between the parti

What if the magic of Disney studios came not only from the stories they tell, but from the way their teams collaborate to create them? When we think of Disney, we naturally picture iconic characters, captivating storytelling, and some of the most powerful animation aesthetics in the world. What is less widely known is that behind this visual magic lies a silent yet profound revolution: a radical organizational transformation driven from within the technical teams themselves.