Neal Griffith, ECI’s CFO, discusses his unconventional route into private equity – from law degree to interning at a bank at the start of the global financial crisis – and how he’s learnt to not catastrophise.
Q: You studied law, worked at a bank and then moved into private equity. What has driven your career decisions?
Over the years I have been asked a lot why I read law to then not pursue it as a career. The answer is that I didn’t have a concrete plan at 18 years old to be a lawyer, but rather considered that the degree sounded like a good one that would provide career optionality. I hoped it would teach me valuable skills around how to think critically, write succinctly and articulate thoughts clearly. I’m certainly not perfect at all of these things but I do think the degree helped! I frequently use those skills now in many aspects of my role.
Having graduated from a good university I had to think about what was next. I had done the usual law vacation scheme placements during my time at university but wasn’t sold on it nor had I received any lucrative training contract offers! Added to this was the fact that it was 2007 and the murmurings of a growing and global financial crisis were getting louder. After a bit of soul-searching I decided to take up the offer of a 12-month graduate internship in New York with the private banking arm of Citigroup. I suppose it was during this period that I realised the financial world did really suit me. The end of my year coincided with the demise of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, though, and it was then clear that we really were in the midst of a proper crisis.
Given I had all but settled on staying within the financial sector in some guise I set about trying to get a job within banking back in the UK. I dare not admit the number of times I was met with the phrase ‘we’re firing, not hiring’. A bit of sage advice from family members about the sense in getting a professional qualification eventually landed and I started my chartered accountancy qualification with Grant Thornton in Belfast in 2009.
So, a slightly more circuitous route than some of my peers but one that I now look back on with a great deal of fondness and appreciation for the lessons learned during one of the more volatile periods in recent history.
Q: And how did you end up in private equity specifically?
Complete luck, really. A colleague in Belfast who was training alongside me at Grant Thornton passed on a message from a recruiter about an entry-level finance role at a private equity house called Vision Capital in London. He wasn’t interested but knew I had been talking about moving to London so shared my details. I got the job!
At that point I knew very little about private equity, I was just looking for the next step after audit and wanted to move to London. It ticked all the boxes and everything developed from there.
Q: What made you want to join ECI, and has it been as you expected?
A few things stood out. The culture felt distinctive, the track record and the long-established nature mattered. There is a lot of embedded experience here, and the functions and processes are well-established and tested. I also knew I’d have a proper handover with Philip, my predecessor, which I felt was a significant, and rare, benefit.
I realise it may sound a bit trite, but what I was sold during the interview process has materialised. I suppose one piece that we perhaps had not fully anticipated is the extent to which I would be wearing an AI hat within the firm. Well, two hats – the hat of someone who wants ECI to innovate and grow, and a compliance hat that is responsible for governance and data security. It’s a genuine stretch, but a really enjoyable one, the kind of stretch that ends up being one of the more interesting parts of the job.
Q: What do you think are the key attributes for someone looking to be a CFO in this sort of industry?
Comfort with complexity is essential. There are a lot of grey zones and you need to be at ease with that. Resilience matters too – things don’t go to plan more often than most CFOs would care to admit. And more than anything else, a good team. You can’t do this job alone. We have strong internal teams, good advisors and good administrators, all of whom are essential.
I don’t think there’s a particular route in to the role and I view my own as having certain benefits. It forced me not to give up, but it also meant I built a broader set of skills than I might have done through a different path.
Finally, be prepared for the downs as well as the ups – this is a long-term industry and the best people within it tend to have that long-term perspective.
Quick Fire with Neal:
What was your first ever job
Caddying at Royal Portrush Golf Club. It was a great job for learning to talk to people from all walks of life. I was 17, and I kept doing it through my university holidays. In hindsight it was excellent training for a career that turned out to be quite relationship-driven. It’s for others to judge whether I was actually any good at the caddying part!
Beach holiday or city break?
City break is my default, but these days, with children, beach holiday wins.
What’s your best and worst use of AI so far?
The best is probably when we used it to dig quite deeply into a pretty specific legal point, which surfaced some nuanced alternative thinking that allowed us to discuss with the lawyers and ultimately achieve a better outcome. The worst was when we were repeatedly trying to get Copilot to scrape a file and it kept returning the wrong one. There’s something uniquely frustrating about it saying, ‘You’re right, my mistake, here is the correct file’ and returning, yet again, the wrong one.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received?
It came from my dad, after I got some exam results that weren’t what I had hoped for. He said: “It’s not what you wanted, but just remember you’re the same person today that you were yesterday and will be tomorrow. You’ll get past it”. I’d always been fairly good at things up to that point, so it was the first time something had gone off-plan. I was catastrophising well beyond what was warranted. That advice – or really, that perspective – has stuck with me. Things still go off plan, and I’m still not perfect at dealing with that, but I’m better than I was.
What would your colleagues be surprised to learn about you?
That I do actually have a sense of fun! I think when you join a well-established organisation in a role like mine you probably lean with your more serious side. I hope that they have seen I do have a more fun side as well!
