Incisive Financial Understanding

PROFILE - BRIAN WARNES MA FCA FRSA

Brian holds a Physics degree from Oxford (Natural Sciences) and qualified as a Chartered Accountant with KPMG. He spent the first part of his career in Development Capital including setting up a fund for Midland Bank in 1979 which he ran for 8 years.

A main focus, in making any investment, to ensure management teams have a strong feel for the essentials of business like the importance of margins, how to plan, measure and control cash flow and how to create financially secure companies even, or perhaps especially, in challenging environments.

A relatively small group of patterns characterise business behaviour. These can be incorporated into simple benchmarks like 'Break-Even point'; 'Creditor-Strain' & 'Net Current Asset Requirement' which materially helps management teams understand, plan and run their businesses effectively.

Brian left the Bank in 1987 setting up 'Business Dynamics Limited' to bring knowledge of the techniques techniques to a wider audience For the last 20 years BDL has 1) been working directly with a wide variety of companies and 2) running seminars for management teams, chief-executive groups, bankers, professional advisers, investment funds and business schools.

Brian's earlier career encompassed:

• Advising on the creation and operation of sustainable development projects in Kenya and other pats of the developing world for the Commonwealth Development Corporation (the British equivalent of the World Bank). Projects ranged across oil palm, tea & coffe plantations, tea factories, game lodges, hotels, electricity generation plants, housing schemes, housing finance corporations, industrial companies & Development finance companies providing equity and loans to start-up and growing businesses.
• Helping struggling investee companies of a London-based venture capital fund - itself in trouble - to steer their way successfully through recession without access to more money.
• Setting up and running the fast-acting, development and venture capital fund for the Midland Bank Group building up a portfolio of 60 investments over 8 years.

More recently Brian has become involved with matters like pensions, looking both at investment strategy and the way in which pension deficits are calculated. He has also taken a keen interest in the debate on International Financial Reporting Standards.

Physicists measure the natural behaviour of physical events to very high degrees of accuracy. Applied to the planning and control of businesses, pension funds, banks and similar operations, a powerful and highly accurate range of fast-acting, quick-to-apply control techniques has emerged in which BDL has come to specialise.

Brian and his company ‘Business Dynamics Limited ’ have worked with Bottom Line Impact for the last 5+ years.