C Level Finance Unified skyline Dubai Abu Dhabi Gemini_Generated

About C Level Finance

Discover the founder-led expertise and partnership philosophy driving our success

Our Story

My journey in banking

I worked 28 years as a corporate and commercial banker in international financial institutions.

Once I joined ABN AMRO and (then) Citibank, I got the chance to have significant international and multicultural exposure.

As a banker, I met and worked alongside thousands of people from banking, financial institutions, finance, and accounting across all industries.

When I first started as a junior banker I got my CPA certification. For some years I took a 2nd job as part-time accountant for small companies. My 3rd side job was teaching accounting training courses.

It was tough during these years, struggling to keep up with the different demands of three parallel banks but this proved to be of tremendous help later in my banking career.

I have gained a better understanding of accounting and of finance in general. And this helped me progress as a banker. Credit analysis a strange concept at the beginning became pretty familiar.

I was involved in a number of big projects:

-the launch of retail banking in both ABN Amro and Citi

-the launch of commercial banking in Citi

-the launch of options

-managed to grow significantly both banks portfolio of corporate and global clients

-believe it or not I somehow managed to get out banking with zero non-performing loans tagged to my portfolio/name

It was straight forward until ...it wasn't.

Banking started to consolidate. Cutting costs, increasing capital efficiency became the name of the game.

"It was straight forward until... it wasn't."

A gap in the market

Six years ago I started tinkering with the idea to start my own firm specialising in recruiting in banking, finance, accounting, controlling, FP&A, and treasury.

For the people I already new, met and worked with for 28 years.

Start using the unparalleled network of outstanding talented people I built.

Finance professionals play a crucial role in driving business success and economic stability.

5 years ago, everyone was searching for IT professionals.

Everyone was talking about the lack of IT professionals.

And yet there was another stark decline no one noticed.

Less and less people were choosing finance and accounting as a career.

Companies started to signal difficulties in finding skilled candidates:

the accounting profession is aging (quite a number of them are nearing retiring age).
graduates find no incentives to join the profession.
educational requirements are too high.
pay hasn't kept pace with other professions.
concerns about automation and AI replacing jobs started to grow

"Less and less people were choosing finance and accounting as a career."

Founding C Level Finance

Once I identified this niche, I decide to set up the business.

I learned on the job from some of the most experienced recruiters in the US, UK, and Australia.

Our first CFO recruiting project was signed end of November 2019. The successful candidate signed the offer end of December and started early January 2020 with plans to hire C Level Finance to recruit a Chief Accountant and financial controllers and senior accountants.

It was Recruiters Nirvana right there and then.

Little that we knew what would happen two months later. Those challenges crystallized the vision for C Level Finance.

Here we are 6 years later starting our new adventure with a strong focus on Dubai and Abu Dhabi (top world wide financial centres).

In the mean time we were busy pioneering some powefull additions to our recruiting projects:

McQuaig psychometric tests for cadidates
McQuaig definition of the ideal profile by stakeholders
Marshall Goldsmith Stakeholder Centered Coaching

We will continue to do so.

We expanded the team: Larisa is the dream researcher every recruiter would love to partner with.

Passionate and really paying attention to details.

She is also the one keeping me grounded.

If she says something will happen, most likely it will.

The voice of reason coming from her life & work experience.

I'll keep adding to this page as we progress as a team and as a business.

"I learned on the job from some of the most experienced recruiters in the US, UK, and Australia."

Our Guiding Principles

Human-Led Search

While automation is on everyone's mind these days we believe the human connection is tremendously undervalued.

We do not use platforms.
Passive approach is not going to cut it.
We proactively engage talent.
Value (often) hides with candidates that are not looking for a new job.

Undivided Focus

We do not engage in competing projects for several reasons:

Not fair for our clients
Not fair for our candidates
Could be lucrative for us as recruiters but it's so biased

Radical Transparency

We are an open book.

Too many recruiting projects go south because all parties are keeping things to themselves.
A recipe for failure.
So let's start by sharing the whole picture.
It's for the better. We all avoid nasty things along the way.