Recruitment — Finance / Procurement: M. Sowerby

[People & Places]

Curriculum Vitae — Marguerite Sowerby

Date of birth: 4 July 1971
Directorships: two (dissolved); disqualification period lapsed

Personal statement

A results-driven finance and procurement professional who delivers, on time and to budget,
whatever is required. I do not ask why something is needed — only by when. Two decades across
complex, discreet and occasionally difficult supply chains and jurisdictions. No request too
unusual; no deadline too tight; and no question I feel any need to ask.

Career history

• 2008–present — Halcyon Freeport Logistics (Larnaca) — Head of Procurement & Supply Chain. Discreet cross-border sourcing and fulfilment for a private client base. Consistently met every target.
• 2004–2008 — Meridian Protective Solutions — Finance Director. Financial control for a private-security contractor operating in unsettled regions. Company subsequently restructured offshore.
• 2001–2004 — Castellan Commodities Ltd — Financial Controller. A trading house of, shall we say, opaque ownership. Books immaculate; questions unasked.
• 1998–2001 — Verron Biological Materials — Procurement Manager. Specialist "hard-to-source" biological and clinical supply; short lead times a speciality.
• 1994–1998 — various — audit and finance roles, several concluding when the entity did.

Qualifications

• ACCA (fellow); Diploma in International Trade & Logistics.

Note

References describe a "flexible approach to reconciliation", a talent for "creative cost
allocation", and a colleague who is "utterly unflappable and does not ask what it is for".

[J. Fairhead (People & Places)]

Formidable. Fast, unsentimental, and she delivers — she closed the interview herself before I could. Recommend without hesitation.

[S. Pardoe (People & Places)]

For the record: her career is a tour of the least reputable organisations I have ever seen assembled on one page — offshore 'logistics', a private-security outfit in unsettled regions, a commodities house whose owners nobody can name, and a 'biological materials' broker. In plain terms, there are hints of organised-crime connections.

[D. Pike]

And every one of those numbers added up — that is the entire point. We are not running a Sunday school. I asked her, hypothetically, whether she could source a live human heart at short notice. She did not blink; she asked for a delivery address and quoted a lead time of a day. That is precisely the temperament this desk requires.

[M. Ross (Personnel Security)]

And a woman with a history like hers is in no position to grow a conscience or make a fuss about ours. A person who never asks what a thing is for never becomes a problem. Ideal.

[G. Naismith (People & Places)]

Offer made and accepted. Finance / Procurement. Do not, under any circumstances, ask her how she hits her targets.