Christopher Shooter

6 month Contract extended to 9 months and will end in March 2026. Manage a Team of 16 people covering FP&A, Commercial and Operations Business Partners protecting margins through cost control and pricing based on current material costs. Delivering Month-end accounts, Forecasts and Budgets. Lead the Finance Function in SAP upgrade installing COPA, FIORI in S4

Western Europe FP&A Lead for Poultry with responsibility for sites in UK, France and Netherlands plus oversight of our new acquisition in Poland. It splits into 70% FP&A and 30% Accounting including corporate reporting. It is a broad leadership role covering monthly reporting and short-term forecasting for all the sites through to operating efficiency in Plant Reviews. I also squeeze in major capital commitment justifications, IT projects for Finance, credit management of customers etc

Food Production across 3 sectors; Fresh Chicken, Cooked Chicken and imported cooked chicken. Revenue close to $1bn across UK, France, Netherlands and Russia. • Reporting to the CFO for Cargill Meats Europe. • Leading the implementation of Portfolio and Project management concepts. • M&A activity as Finance Lead in European acquisition targets. • Planning processes for Budgets and forecasts. Analytics.

Several short-term assignments e.g. Margin analysis for Retail entity in Brussels – 3mths KPI dashboard for Recruitment Consultancy, Luxembourg – 1mth

• Reports to European CFO and Global VP for Strategy and M&A. • Representing Finance in senior cross-functional teams formed specifically to execute projects with main Board sponsorship across Europe and Australasia. The position requires credibility at main Board level, senior change management skills and broad commercial knowledge linked with independent thinking. Achievements • Franchising 100 corporate locations in Italy, Switzerland and Spain, with total pre-tax loss of $14m on annual revenue of $270m. I built the financial models that validated the proposal, provided all the detailed financial information both to our consultants and the data-room for interested bidders and ensured the final agreements met Hertz financial criteria. I was the face of Hertz in financial matters with all bidders and often personally explained how the various financial aspects of car rental worked for those bidders new to the space. • Integrating Australasia (revenue $0.4bn) with Europe (revenue $1.6bn) to create the International Division and upgrading the financial control and planning environment. I was asked to ensure that Australasia carried no financial issues as it was brought out from under the USA Division into the International Division. Alone, I identified both USGAAP issues on the treatment of leases and identified significant p&l adjustments on residual values of vehicles. This required rigorous analysis on my part to convince senior staff in the USA Division to make the necessary adjustments of $3m prior to transfer of the businesses. I used my good relationship with Australian staff to build further integration initiatives.

• I was nominated by operational staff to represent the interests of all 750 UK employees against the Company proposals to close the defined benefit UK schemes. A very high profile role where I was able to; • Explain to large audiences complex pension issues in a non-financial manner. • Develop a convincing case for changes to the Company’s proposals using market data. • Successfully negotiate improvements to the Company’s proposals in a non-confrontational manner and at the highest levels in the Company. • I was thanked by many employees personally for explaining the changes in a credible, open and honest manner, for being their voice, and for successfully winning the changes they desired.

• Reporting to both European CFO and Global VP for Financial Planning. Manage a team of five physically near me with a further 15 remote reports spread over Europe. • Responsible for forecasting and profit improvement initiatives of the European Division under USGAAP. Provide detailed variance bridges. Control and drive the Divisional Budget process. • Prepare material for European CEO meetings with US Parent, Private Equity Owners and analysts. Achievements • During a recession with serious uncertainty in demand forecasts in all European markets, the Division continued to meet its near-term forecasts. This required my team to be very challenging on volume forecasts and to ensure costs were removed to their full extent when volume was reduced. I took a very visible role in challenging our senior team on cost reduction to ensure the culture was not one of complacency taking out over $50m of costs from original forecasts. • Being part quoted, Hertz must continually improve both interest coverage and gearing ratios. To meet this challenge I set-up new divisional structures around a “Cash Council” involving the most senior management of the Division. I played a significant role in educating the leadership team on the “business levers” available to improve cash and related ratios and my financial leadership through detailed analysis and target setting was fundamental to our exceeding cashflow targets by some $200m. • In order to maintain our profitability as volume reduced, the business re-organised the European Planning function from 8 Country locations to 2 Regional teams reducing headcount by 25%. Through my individual credibility with members of my extended team I made this a success by leading much of the HR activity involved, personally interviewing and meeting concerns of each of my team members. The upheaval also required commitment by the whole team to extended hours which I led through example.

• Reporting to the UK Managing Director and the European CFO. Direct a team of 30 covering accounting, planning, treasury, credit collections, damage recovery. • Responsible for all financial matters including negotiating funding lines for a $250m revenue business. Achievements • Made the product from the Finance function ultra credible both within the ; • Management Team - Focussed the Finance function on operational data which was granular and identified emerging cost trends and I installed tight Balance Sheet control so there were no surprises against either profit or cash-flow forecasts. • Operations Staff –I personally took a positive and inspirational message to the Operations Staff on financial progress at all times clearly explaining how their efforts were contributing to profit performance with focus on specific cost issues by location. • I became the facilitator in the Strategic meetings of the Management Team as my skill at being able to articulate the core issues and concepts from the team’s discussions was very appreciated. My transparent style and wider M&A experience allowed me to make these meetings very constructive in bonding the Team together and agreeing objectives that had everyone’s commitment. • Under my direction my team improved revenue quality through putting in place realistic contribution analysis on major accounts. Hertz renegotiated its largest account $15m in the UK and eventually withdrew from the account altogether as our contribution analysis demonstrated it continued to be loss making. • Introduced risk profiles and credit strategies for the customer base involving me in direct discussions with major customers. Reduced DSO by 14% from 36 to 31 days and released $200k from bad debt provision.

• Report to the European CFO and control of a team of 5 directly and 10 remote reports spread over Europe. The first contact for financial information by US management with responsibility for; • Control of the month-end consolidation of eight European countries requiring crisp communication and clear understanding of the issues and deadlines. • Responsibility to ensure all accounting complied with USGAAP. • Accounting for Head Office cost centres identifying areas of poor cost control.

• Led a team reporting to the European VP M&A responsible for delivering deals to criteria.

Harrisons & Crosfield plc (Harcros) is a diverse conglomerate with five Divisions: Chemicals/Linatex, Plantations, Timber, Foods and General Trading with total revenue of £1.6bn. The vast majority of activity was overseas. From 1998 it focused purely on speciality chemicals and changed its name to Elementis plc.

• Placed in this role by the Group Board to realise the profit stream forecast from the significant capital investments made in the Company which had not materialised. I was responsible for five sites in UK, France & Holland with a remit which covered Finance (preparation of all financial statements and management information, capital projects, negotiation of banking facilities and development of relations with relevant external bodies), IT, HR and Property Management. Achievements • Facilitated a strategy which refocused the business from manufacturing own product to global outsourcing basic feed stock on which the business performed value-added processes cutting the cost of basic feed-stock by 20%, which was essential to compete in the bulk chemical space. • Led cross-functional Change team to install Oracle ERP and upgrade accounting ledgers to CODA. • Sold 20 acre brown-field site after gaining planning permissions despite local resistance.

In the Nottingham office qualified as an ACA and gained both big company audit experience (ie Next plc, BPB Industries) and incomplete records accounting experience.