Insight - Ok thus far.

(From Financial Director)

Byline: Tom Berry.

John Maguire was a bit of a financial whizz-kid in his early 20s. While most young accountants are making their first move into business, Maguire was wandering the world in a variety of finance roles with Cable & Wireless. After 10 years or so with the telecoms group, Maguire had risen to regional finance director of C&W Singapore and, latterly, vice president of finance of its Japan and Asia operations.

By the time he had reached his early 30s, he had a wife and two children and was looking to settle down into a nice, quiet UK-based plc. "Every two years, I had lived in a different country. I was just looking for a bit of stability really," he says.

But instead of finding a business in a defensive sector with a comfortable office, in 2000 Maguire took the job of group FD of Scottish telecoms company Thus, after he had asked its chief executive William Allen for a reference. "Bill said that if I was in the job market I might as well work for Thus. The pull factor was the opportunity of working for a quoted company, which for an FD is very attractive," Maguire says.

Thus had been going through what Maguire describes with classic FD understatement as "a very interesting time". The company had listed in November 1999 at about GBP3 a share, quickly rocketing to over GBP8, and the company acquired FTSE-100 status and was valued in the billions. Within a single quarter, Thus was trading as a small cap company at a fraction of its post-IPO value. "Thus was the first telco in the UK to be affected by the bursting dotcom bubble," says Maguire. "I joined four or five months after it had issued a profits warning and, although Thus generally has a sense of mission and a real feeling of purpose, people were feeling a little bruised at the time."

Maguire's mission was to revisit Thus's business plan, ensure that long-term financing was in place, and get a clearer picture of what the company's 50% shareholder Scottish Power wanted to do with it after the markets crashed. "Scottish Power was rethinking its multi-utility strategy at the time the bubble burst. Thus didn't really fit with the Scottish Power portfolio and they were rethinking their options." It soon became clear that a demerger was on the cards and Maguire worked closely with Scottish Power group FD David Nish to ensure a smooth separation in March 2002.