David Arden on passion, drive and autonomy to build excellence

David Arden

Rutherford Cross’ Lucy Edgar reflects on the business’ most recent Next Generation CFO event, with David Arden, CFO of Sainsbury’s Bank.

David Arden is no stranger to a challenge.  He has held senior leadership positions through some of the most turbulent times in the Financial Services history and was most recently appointed to the role of Chief Financial Officer for Sainsbury’s Bank in 2013, having held the interim position since 2012.

Earlier this week, David spoke at Rutherford Cross’ first ‘Next Generation CFO’ seminar of 2015, addressing a large audience of aspiring CFOs in Edinburgh.

Giving the audience an insight into his 23 year career and leadership journey, David discussed his experiences in banking; notably the issues the sector has faced in recent years, the rise of the challenger bank, and his own experiences of establishing Sainsbury’s Bank as a ‘stand alone’ financial institution. David’s key messages were; the need to identify and play to your strengths, the importance of maintaining your network at all times as you never know who will help you get that next job, and that helping others along the way and ‘paying it forward’ have been his career mantras. On being a successful leader, David’s view is that to be great, you need to recruit great candidates and become adept at delivering through people.

Woven through his presentation was the story of financial services in the UK – a landscape that has in some sense changed beyond all recognition over his working life, but in others has remained the same. The details of his perspective on those changes, of course remains for those of us fortunate enough to have been in attendance.  What I can say is that we all left the seminar better informed on the sector and better equipped to progress in our own careers.

At Rutherford Cross, we echo David’s advice on building your career and pride ourselves in our ability to help clients attract the highest calibre talent and helping candidates identify their strengths and roles in which they can play to them.

If you are interested in building your network and attending future ‘Next Generation CFO’ events, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

The Rutherford Cross ‘Next Generation’ events take place quarterly.  For more information on forthcoming events, contact [email protected]  follow us on LinkedIn.