Taking Stock: An interim FD's Valentine's tale

TAKING STOCK doesn’t usually celebrate Valentine’s Day: not out of principle, more a technicality – we’re too busy finding interesting snippets for you lot than to wine, dine and buy ridiculously expensive cards.

But you guys seem to find the time combine number-crunching with a-hugging and a-kissing.

Take interim finance director Martin Walby, for example, whose assignment to St Lucia proved life-changing.

Seconded by BIE Group to work on the sale of a retail subsidiary of a UK parent company in administration, he set up a regional finance function to review operations and sit in between management and the administrators. Okay, that’s not very romantic. Indeed, nor was the successful sale of the business – challenging and satisfying maybe, but not sexy enough for Barry White to croon about.

However, Walby returned to the island a few years later to marry the lady he met over there on assignment. Aaah! Not so romantically, he also used the opportunity to reunite the rest of team he’d worked with at the time.

“The assignment with BIE Group turned out to be a both a professional success and a major turning point in my personal life,” said Walby.

Now where’s that handkerchief?