Cairn Energy finance director Jann Brown is a lasting example of what is still unfortunately a rare breed in business today ­a female finance boss of a FTSE-350 company. But moving up the ladder of success has hardly been an easy ride.

Finally getting her break in the audit department at KPMG after other firms balked at taking a chance on a young mother, Jann made a key decision to step out of her safety zone, despite her bosses at the time trying their best to keep hold of one of their highest flyers. ‘It was a fantastic opportunity, but within a year and a half I realised that to get on in audit there would be a lot of travel involved, which wasn’t ideal for me,’ she says.

‘So, I moved into tax, which was much more office-based, and that was one of the best moves I’ve ever made. The partners at the time tried to dissuade me from doing that, but it was absolutely the right thing for me. It exposed me almost immediately to deals and transactions work. To me, that’s still the most exciting part of accounting.’

Jann moved on to Deloitte as a transactions tax specialist and was settling down there when she was recommended for the group tax manager position at rapidly expanding Cairn Energy. ‘I joined up within a matter of weeks of my predecessor FD also joining. He soon encouraged me to step out of the pure tax role and be his financial controller.

‘At Cairn, we’re very much about giving people responsibility until they almost say, “I can’t take any more”, so there wasn’t any aspect of the finance director role that I hadn’t tried, or wasn’t familiar with, by the time I took over,’ she says.

Jann weathered a baptism of fire in stepping in to the finance director role at Cairn after seven years as the company’s financial controller ­ she was charged with shepherding Cairn India through the final stages of its IPO after the oil explorer’s flourishing Indian arm was spun out of the parent company last year. ‘We set ourselves an incredibly aggressive timetable, which is what we usually do. We got there earlier than expected, but I don’t think any of us realised quite how intense that process would be. It was a huge amount of work, but I wouldn’t have changed it. Maybe I wouldn’t have gone through it quite so intensely, but we’re always looking for the next strategic opportunity we can sink our teeth into.’

Pressure has always been a motivator for Jann and something she believes any budding finance head will thrive on. ‘When I was financial controller, I took my responsibility very personally. I had to make sure everything that went through me went to my FD, Kevin Hart, so it would be absolutely correct. Now, instead of using Kevin as a sounding board to discuss things I have my two senior managers.
‘We’re a team. We’ve worked together for a really long time and we complement each other really well in terms of skillsets and areas of interest.’

Brown adds that instilling a level of trust is also invaluable to the smooth running of a team. ‘I know that they will keep me in the loop. They know they can come in and see me when something comes up. On the finance side of things, we’re pretty democratic.’

Flexible assets

Jann Brown offers her indispensable wisdom to anyone thinking about making it to the top of the tree.

‘Financial health isn’t about P&L, it’s about having a strong, flexible balance sheet, and not having too much gearing. The P&L cannot be any guidance as to underlying your financial health. I would only look at operating cashflow rather than what the bottom line was.’