Hundred Group offers FDs a golden ticket

Financial decision-makers: the readers of this magazine carry much weight in the corporate world just by virtue of having that collective title. In real life, though, the bulk of that power is concentrated at the top of the food chain, where FDs are able to find out and affect what regulatory changes might be afoot before they wash up at their door. For those outside that group, that influence is rare. How can FDs of sub-FTSE businesses gain access to channels where their voice can be heard by those making decisions that affect their mandate?

Andy Halford may have the answer. The chief financial officer of Vodafone may be vilified in the press as the man who engineered the mobile communication giant’s escape from paying several millions of pounds in tax in a gargantuan battle with HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC). But as chairman of the Hundred Group - the secretive, powerful lobby for FDs and CFOs of the UK’s biggest businesses - since last October, opening up the group’s activities and considering ways the wider FD community can have a hand in discussions it has with the tax authorities, HM Treasury and various advisory groups to the government is something he is giving far more attention to than his predecessors.

Change of image

First on Halford’s agenda has been to amend the group’s image enforced under his predecessor, retiring BG Group FD Ashley Almanza, of a highly secretive, inward-looking group. Observers including Financial Director nearly fell off their chairs when the group’s distinctly out- of-date website was relaunched days after Halford’s succession to the chairman’s role was announced, displaying a full complement of information on its scheduled meetings, letters sent and minutes taken, the committees and their leadership set out and clear explanations of the issues it is currently working on. “There’s still quite a lot more I think we should do with it, but at least it’s not five years out of date,” Halford tells Financial Director.

The Hundred Group has long seemed something of an ice maiden, not answering calls from journalists about its work, neglecting to furnish a moribund website with updates, not bothering to report on its achievements or discussions, and generally giving rise to the image of a highly secretive boys club. Almanza rarely spoke about the group’s activities: other FDs who know him have told Financial Director over the course of his tenure as chair that the group’s silence emanated from his aversion to the media and the limelight.

“Certainly from talking to people [in the group], this balance of how visible or invisible to be is down to the individual. When the group was chaired by [ex-GlaxoSmithKline CFO] Jon Symonds two or three terms ago, I think it was really quite visible,” Halford says. “Ashley has done it on the other end of the scale. Quite a few people have said to me that the group is invisible and it doesn’t need to be. But it is for the incumbent to decide how much they want to make of it.”

Getting involved

The silence that has emanated from the group perhaps also reflects the fact that only a few members really participate. Halford is working on that too.

“There is clearly a fairly small hardcore who are very involved, there’s some who have just never been involved, and possibly won’t ever be involved,” Halford admits. The group meets four times a year and in between those meetings four sub-committees work on its core issues: taxation, pensions, financial reporting and investor relations. Halford says the financial reporting committee draws the most members and the most time commitment. It’s a topic that bears down on all FDs all of the time - so it is a debate that the whole community should be engaged in.

“Some of what we want to achieve is best achieved behind closed doors and some of it is best achieved the opposite way. People need to be aware of what we are doing and what we are contributing to,” says Halford. “Whether we have the balance right I don’t know, but I’ve got a great opportunity to see different peoples’ views.”