I build the models myself
Shaun O’Reilly, Founder, FP&A Hub. Chartered Accountant. Brisbane.
How I got here
I studied Mathematics at the University of Manchester, then joined PwC in 2013 and spent the next decade working on businesses in difficulty. Restructuring, turnaround and operational improvement, first in the UK and then in Australia. In 2024 I joined Alvarez & Marsal as an Associate Director in their turnaround and restructuring team.
The work was always the same shape underneath. A business is under pressure, the information is incomplete, a decision has to be made within weeks, and somebody has to build the analysis that the decision rests on. I was usually that person. I have built short-term cash flow models in businesses that had none, analysed retail store performance to advise on how to respond to market changes during the COVID-19 pandemic, and scored a childcare operator’s entire centre network so its executive team could agree what to sell.
What I noticed over this time is that the model outlasted the project. Long after the engagement closed, the client would still be running the file I built with their team. That was the part of the job with the longest life.
Why I started FP&A Hub
Two things bothered me about how finance advisory is usually sold.
The first is the report. A consultant arrives, works out what is wrong, writes it down and leaves. The analysis is fine and the business cannot repeat it. Six months later the numbers have moved and the report is stale.
The second is software. You buy a tool that does most of what you want, and the remaining part, which is usually the part specific to your business, you never get. You pay for it every year regardless.
FP&A Hub does the thing I kept ending up doing anyway, on purpose. I build the model with your team, in the room, so they understand every assumption in it. I teach them how it works while it is being built. Then I hand it over and go. No licence, no subscription, nothing of mine left in your business that you have to keep paying for.
I do not think this is anything new. I think it is what people expected they were buying in the first place.
The bee, the hexagon and the hub
I started my career in Manchester, where the worker bee has been the city’s symbol since the industrial revolution. It is on the lamp posts, the town hall floor and half the tattoos in the city. What it stands for is plain enough: work, and work done alongside other people rather than alone.
A hive is also a hub. The mark on this site is a hexagon for that reason, and the name is FP&A Hub for the same one. I do not arrive as an outside expert who hands down an answer. I join your team for a period, do the work with them, and leave the hive stronger than I found it.
What I have worked on
More than a decade in restructuring and operational improvement at Alvarez & Marsal and PwC, in Australia and the UK, at Associate Director level for the last several years.
Some of what that involved: short-term cash flow models and cash processes for businesses with liquidity pressure, running a crisis management office at a global logistics company after successive cyber-attacks, a site-by-site diagnostic for a childcare operator that led to the sale of 20+ centres, scenario and exit cost modelling for a business unit of a global FMCG group, store network options for a large national retailer, and an analysis toolkit that automated standard financial analysis across an entire advisory practice. Nine of these are written up as case studies.
The restructuring background is the reason I work the way I do. In that environment you never have complete information, the deadline is set by the cash rather than by anyone’s preference, and being approximately right on Tuesday beats being exactly right in a fortnight. It teaches you to find the few numbers that decide the answer and to ignore the rest. It also teaches you to sit with people on the worst week of their working life and be useful rather than impressive.
Qualifications
- Chartered Accountant
- BSc (Hons) Mathematics, University of Manchester
- Former Associate Director, Turnaround and Restructuring, Alvarez & Marsal
- Former Associate Director, Operational Restructuring, PwC Australia, and Manager at PwC in the UK
How I work
I am based in Brisbane and can travel to Melbourne and Sydney as required. I work in person at the start of every engagement and remotely for most of the build.
I do the work myself. There is no delivery team behind me, and if you speak to me about an engagement, I am the person who will turn up and build it. If a piece of work needs skills I do not have, I will say so and help you find someone who does.
I say no to work reasonably often. If a model will not change a decision, or the timeline cannot produce something honest, or the problem is not one I am good at, I would rather tell you in the first conversation than find out in week four.
If you want to talk it through
Send me two lines: what you need and when you are free. I read and answer every email myself.
Get in touch