Jochen Faber

Automotive Component Manufacture

Extract from references:

“Thank you Jochen for guiding us through some very tricky loops and for the role you have played to keep us on track.”

“We have worked with Jochen over the last 4 years, during which time he has supported us in our initiatives to:
1. Dispose one of our businesses into a joint venture with an Stock Exchange of Thailand listed entity. This involved filtering through other potential partners, both local and foreign and finally, structuring the transaction and the funding thereof. (Transaction 1)
2. Restructure the local shareholder (Duys Engineering Group (Pty) Ltd) for optimised BBBEE ownership and the flow through benefits thereof. (Transaction 2)
3. Sell a minority stake in the Joint Venture to a global 3rd technical party (Transaction 3)
4. Raise debt and working capital facilities

All of the above has been instrumental in us growing the business from a medium sized, family owned business, to one which today has secured tier 1 automotive contracts to the value of R750m per annum and has the technical and financial shareholding to position it to play in the Tier One automotive space.

Jochen has worked closely with me as the MD on each of these transactions to:
1. Package the value proposition and business case professionally
2. Formulate price expectations for sellers
3. Assist in formulating the negotiation strategy and approach
4. Prepare for and attend to data room preparation for the due diligence
5. Assess offers and assist in formulating counter proposals
6. Tax and deal structuring
7. Post deal implementation and governance
8. Gap analysis and strategic planning to close the gaps require to facilitate stable operations for growth
9. Implement a new ERP for the new entity”

In addition to above I worked as part of the executive team to provide ongoing feedback to stakeholders in terms of plans, deviations to plan and related countermeasures and assisted in securing banking facilities to support the working capital requirements of the original operations and provided oversight to the transformation of the finance function. 

General Advisory – Other

Bosch Capital

Included as team member to provide capacity to the team assessing Transnet acquisition of Private sector investments in Mozambique 

Dube Tradeport

Member of advisory panel to assist team assess new tennants for the SEZ. +/- 15 assignments as well as assignment to update the entity sustainability financial model

Numsa (The accountant that reconciled)

Appointed to rapid response team for the aviation, auto and steel industry. +/- 20 assignment supporting labour lawyers in S189 processes in assessing economic rationale, formulating alternates and mitigation’s as a result of retrenchment. Transitioned to expert witness where required.

City Logistics

Due diligence service for acquisition.  

DTB Cartage

Sale of business

Equity Aviation

Due diligence for acquisition of ground handling services at each airport in South Africa

SANIP

Review of business plans for project manager to support investment of  +/- R400 million funded, followed by interim commercial support to meet condition precedents and then establish reporting mechanisms to support commercialisation 

Referral from Graham Muller and Associate colleagues.

Ongoing Virtual CFO: Supporting the Board and CEO:

  1. Quarterly review and presentation of financials to the board
  2. Defining and continually adapting internal reporting frameworks to comply with, and exceed stakeholder requirements.
  3. Partnering with the CEO to drive growth and sustainability of the organisation
  4. Providing commercial support and capacity on larger projects

Ongoing collaboration agreement to support CI Consulting projects, typically in large corporate organisations liasing at C Suite, Exec manager level.

Projects to date include:

  1. Electronic component manufacture – Facilitated a strategic alignment of understanding between finance, operations and leadership on the reasons for labour and overhead under recoveries. Built on the aligned understanding to design and build the foundational systems to predict, communicate, measure and report variances to expectations for syncronised corrective action and continuous improvement. 
  2. Automotive Logistics – Supported a multidisciplinary team engaged to assist global organisation decide on whether to maintain existing part distribution model or adopt global system. Provided input to current costs, what the costs would likely be under the various options and part of process to unlock further detail and action to validate assumptions and prepare for implementation. 

Ongoing collaboration to provide financial expertise into feasibility studies conducted.

To date have engaged in 4 SEZ projects together, one of which ws the project plan for Dube Tradeport SEZ and the others were  feasibility studies where I took on the role of building the financial models that dealt with assessing the viability of investment in bulk costs and top structures.

This relationship developed from associates at Graham Muller and Associates.  

Manufacturing

This was a one off exercise to build and interim MRP model at the referral of previous Moore Stephens colleagues. The objective was to upgrade the management systems to accommodate the business model transition to multi-site, mutli-valuestream production required to accommodate the enhanced product offering. This involved:

  1. Collecting and validating BOM and supplier masterdata
  2. Collecting
    1. Customer order information
    2. inventory on hand and on order information.
  3. Building an excel model to calculate  requirements and propose order quantities per supplier
  4. Train and embed as a weekly process in the business
  5. Provide input into transitioning into ERP project

On conclusion of the assignment the client referred me to AeroklasDuys. 

Graham and I met through Deloitte. He involved me in the following projects:

  1. Logistics – Team member to conduct activity based costing for subsidiary of listed company which handled and stored liquids in bulk for the purpose of identifying opportunity for cost reduction and to provide information to support customer price negotiations. (Entity had a 40% growth in profits as a result)
  2. Manufacturing – Costing and pricing model for sugar products
  3. Wildcoast SEZ financial model dealing with assessing the viability of investment in bulk costs and top structures
  4. KZN DEDT – Assessment of best location in eThekweni to house a BPO Centre 

Auditors of Access

Significant projects:

  1. All Numsa projects
  2. City Logistics due diligence support
  3. Graham Muller projects
  4. DTB Cartage
  5. BPO Park feasibility for Ethekweni
  6. Wildcoast SEZ
  7. DTPC – Supply Chain secondment
  8. Imperial inventory investigations

Freight and Logistics (Auto, retail and minerals)

Finance Director of Access Freight Group and subsidiaries and critical part of their success (5 Years).

Responsibilities and achievements:

  1. Facilitated shareholders developing their estate and wealth plans
  2. Full financial responsibility and accountability for the group.
  3. BBBEE ownership – Sale of minority interest
  4. Key stakeholder management and communication (Providers of financial guarantees and working capital)
  5. Capital, debt and working capital and guarantee facilities grown to facilitate business in excess of 1bn per annum
  6. Ownership and accountability for full IT function for 7 locations (Started moving to cloud in 2007)
    1. Implemented SAP B1 and Corefreight with Alchemix BIC
    2. Developed finance, and business process components of internal management development program
    3. Sharing in Deloitte best company to work for award.
    4. Developed TOPP training programme and graduated a Chartered Accountant

    Key businesses and markets exposed to were:

    1. Developing Africa business for commodity logistics, in particular minerals and agric products through City Deep.
    2. Auto imports of Renault and GWM
    3. Supply chain support to Toyota on their revised operating model in 2008/9 and transshipment facility from containers to JIT deliveries to plant every 20 minutes

    Pharmaceutical Manufacture

    Interim financial manager (Deloitte secondment)

    1. Full financial management responsibilities
    2. Post implementation SAP optimisation and refinement
    3. Change and finance lead on the SAP PP/PI implementation

    Artisan Training

    This was a one off exercise that required assisting the MD and finance manager cost each training course and identify opportunities to flex pricing and curriculum to increase profitability.

    The approach was to:

    1. Analyse the annual general ledger into course variable, direct costs and indirect costs 
    2. Allocate costs to courses (Based on a combination of cost drivers deemed appropriate for each cost type such as number of courses held during the year, number of students, floor space etc)
    3. Understood courses with inadequate contribution
    4. Proposed recommendations to optimise by rescheduling courses for synergies etc

    I consider myself a Deloitte trained professional. My first stint at Deloitte was as an articled clerk where I obtained a robust foundation in:

    1. Auditing listing entities, their subsidiaries, pension funds and municipalities
    2. Accounting for smaller businesses and farmers using Pastel
    3. Tax
    4. Budget projects
    5. Project management of audits and data capture projects

    My second tint was in the Special Services team, later Solutions and then Consulting where I had the following significant projects:

    1. Sanip projects above
    2. SANBS / NBI Secondment
    3. Graham Muller projects
    4. Farm security business policy and procedures
    5. KZN Wildlife policy and procedures
    6. Logistics providers settlement of customer disputes on inventory variances
    7. Electronics manufacturer 1: Labour and cost recovery variances analysis and explanation.
    8. Electronics manufacturer 2: Subsidiary of listed company – Strategy, Finance and IT lead for full “As-Is” business process, structure and system analysis, definition of “To-Be” structures, processes, roles and functional specifications
    9. Auditor General : SAPS value for money audits for KwaZulu-Natal
    10. Freightmax inventory reconciliation and dispute resolution 
    11. Mondi Paper Inventory loss investigation 
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