Financial Services up for double award
Thu, 03 Mar 2016 13:59:00 GMT
The 2016 Business Finance Awards will be announced on Wednesday 9 March
THE University of Huddersfield is on the firmest financial footing of any UK university and its performance has been recognised with a shortlisting in two categories of an awards scheme that aims to reward the best finance talent across the private and public sectors.
The 2016 Business Finance Awards will be announced at a ceremony held at London’s Royal Garden Hotel on 9 March. The University of Huddersfield’s Andrew McConnell is a candidate for UK Financial Director of the Year in the public and voluntary sector; and the 35-strong department he heads has been shortlisted as Finance Team of the Year.
The latest ceremony comes just weeks after Mr McConnell (pictured right) received an OBE at Buckingham Palace. As the University of Huddersfield’s Director of Finance since 2001, he has created and led a financial strategy that has enabled it to become one of the few universities in the UK to have no debt while still being able to invest millions in its campus.
The University’s Finance Team, which implements this strategy, has been accredited with the Customer Service Excellence standard – a distinction held by just two Higher Education finance departments. It is also the winner of the Times Higher Education Leadership and Management award for Outstanding Finance Team in 2015.
The Business Finance Awards are organised by the journal Financial Director. Specifications state that the successful candidate for Finance Director of the Year will be “an industry leader who has achieved notable career success and demonstrated the highest level of innovation, business strategy and quality of service. As a role model, the candidate will possess integrity and strong leadership within the profession”.
Entrants to the Finance Team of the Year category “must demonstrate how they consistently deliver best practice, innovation, added value to the business and deliver leading edge ideas”.
- The Higher Education Statistics Agency Financial Security Index shows that for the past three years, the University of Huddersfield has been the UK’s financially strongest “mainstream” university – ie with a turnover in excess of £100 million. It has no debt but the condition of its estate is in the UK top ten. More than £95 million has been spent on the estate over the last eight years and the University has now embarked on a new £200 million “building without borrowing” programme.
