Chartered Management Accountant &
Member in Practice
We help shareholders and management with timely, independent and expert advice.
Our principal activity is the provision of strategic consulting, improved reporting and governance, funding and strategic accounting services to SMEs, other firms, & stakeholders. We work collaboratively with your existing professional advisers.
r2 Finance helps shareholders with succession planning and fundraising.
Led by Rob Rattray, an award winning finance professional with a strategic & commercial skills set. Awarded the ICAEW Corporate Finance (CF) Qualification, he is also a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment.
Rob is a Chartered Management Accountant licenced by CIMA (with a current practising certificate), and provides FD consulting services. He supports management teams and shareholders - whether family owned or PE/venture capital backed - as a part-time or interim FD - to provide timely, independent expertise.
As a certified partner for Fathom and also Xero, we also work with management teams to provide tools & dashboards to help them with governance & decision making.
Please call or get in touch if you would like to meet or discuss a project.
ABOUT THE NAME
r2
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r squared is a statistical measure of how close the data are to the fitted regression line (ranging from 0 to 1) and known as the coefficient of determination testing the goodness of fit.
Finance
noun
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the management of revenues; the conduct or transaction of money matters generally, especially those affecting the public, as in the fields of banking and investment.
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finances, the monetary resources, as of a government, company, organization, or individual; revenue.
verb
financed, financing.
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to supply with money or capital; obtain money or credit for.
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to raise money or capital needed for financial operations
The calculating machine shown in the picture is a MADAS machine (Multiplication Automatic Division Addition and Subtraction). Patented in 1913, it was used by Rob's grandfather whilst he practised as an actuary.
ADVISORY
We help deliver venture capital or private equity fundraising for your company - whether for growth capital, or to facilitate succession
We also can assist with the complete sale of your company - whether to trade, or to a management team (via a management buy out) funded by private equity funding.
We provide independent timely expertise when you need it.
Corporate finance includes advice to undertakings on capital structure, industrial strategy & related matters.
An independent firm helping
shareholders and management
Capable of delivering a wide range of M&A and related projects.
Irrespective of the conditions.
An unwavering commitment
to help clients navigate complexity
Timely insight on
risk, return and options
An independent partner with the
right skills & attention to detail
Please get in touch if you would like to discuss what success might look like for your project
Interim FD
Consulting Services
Whatever stage or size of business, if you require interim or longer term help, please get in touch if you would like some assistance planning the strategic and financial future of your company to deliver the best outcome for you and your stakeholders.
Rob Rattray is a Chartered Management Accountant and certified partner for Xero and FathomHQ providing best-in-class tools for management teams.
Route Finding
Figuring out the right direction you should take a company can sometimes be hard to see.
Recognising when to abandon a strategy is equally valuable.
Establishing, assessing and then implementing the strategic plan can be difficult without the right tools. Understanding how alternate options may turn-around poor performance, or either constrain or sustain the competitive advantage of your company requires careful assessment of criteria and the right analysis.
Examples of work undertaken include
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Alternate funding & its impact on value
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Development of turn-around plan to increase margins, preserve cash and secure long term funding
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Revising a brand's price strategy
Turnaround Challenges
Most managers will recognise the financial or strategic challenges in their business.
Whether the challenge is access to finance, turning around profitability, improving governance or engaging with stakeholders, without tackling the issue at hand, business performance may well be limited.
Type of work has included
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Gaining debt funding with a budgeted loss-making period using repayment holidays
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Funding growth initiatives using alternate debt and equity finance
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Improving governance & relations with key stakeholders through better MI
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Improvement of gross margins through improved stock management
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Cash generation via active working capital management
Profitable Growth
Achieving growth is a concern for many companies; sustaining profitable growth is a challenge for all companies.
Being aware of how and where profits are made, and whether growth is likely are the first steps in achieving profitable growth.
Type of work has included
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Review of products & SKUs; modelling the optimal product mix to maximise growth, contribution and value
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Modelling choice of suppliers to maximise gross profit but minimise working capital based on alternate terms available
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Setting up pipeline reports to ensure that sales resources are properly managed
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Review of ecommerce performance (tying Google analytics data with the companies' own ecommerce data).
Create Budgets
Official CIMA terminology: Budget
"The budget is the quantitative expression of a plan for a defined period of time. It may include planned sales volume and revenues resource quantities, costs and expenses; assets, liabilities and cash flows"
Rob has assisted a range of company types, from complete start-ups, to high growth and also larger corporates, regarding the production of a budget and rolling forecasts
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zero-based or incremental
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operational, tactical or strategic
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to motivate, fundraise or identify issues
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bottom-up or top down
Type of work has included
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Development of an annual budget
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Sensitivity testing on alternate plans
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Production of 3 year integrated forecasts (P&L, cash flow and balance sheet)
Startups and New Venture
Jumping into a new venture, start-up or expanding emerging sales for a new product or market requires particular care.
Anticipating what remains unseen before a successful launch can be a critical success factor to any endeavour.
Type of work has included
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Coaching the MD of a new start up with multiple valid alternatives to the proposed terms in a shareholder and company structure that could have led to significant and wholly unnecessary dilution
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A need for external funding required the creation of a robust financial model to satisfy diligence by prospective funders
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Review & testing of the business plan provided by prospective distributor & licence holder for a new market
Financial and Operational Modelling
The creation of robust operational & financial models for decision making is paramount in any business.
However, the output for proper decision making can only be valid if it is based on inputs that are reliable and properly tested.
Type of work has included
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'Bottom-up' monthly cash flow forecasts
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"What if" scenario modelling according to volume, price and cost structures
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Application of probabilities to forecasts of margins & sales growth in key segments to establish likely year end out-turn when cash was a critical concern for the directors (a monte carlo simulation was developed)
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Calculating IRRs for different projects so as to optimise shareholder value
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Modelling the impact of earn-outs
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Calculation of normalised working capital and surplus cash in the context of a sale
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Creation of integrated P&L, Cashflow and Balance sheet models
Performance improvement
Without proper information available to managers, it is impossible to benchmark or seek improvements to performance.
Ensuring the business has the right amount of information to hand to facilitate performance improvement is critical.
Type of work has included
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the production of reports that evaluate out-turn performance using variances based on fixed & flexed budgets & current year forecasts
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Creation of a dashboard for Board and operational management. The regular reporting of critical KPIs on a daily/weekly basis ensured the business would focus on priority issues so it could meet its remedial plan and contractual agreements that would otherwise trigger a breach and incur possible fines or loss of contract
Please get in touch
Basepoint Centres - Shoreham,
Little High Street,
Shoreham By Sea,
West Sussex BN43 5EG
Telephone 01273 042307