Aleks Ziolkowska - Director, BSc Management with Finance at Warwick, joined 5 years ago
What sets EFC apart the most in my view is the culture. Since day one everyone has been really friendly and I always felt I could ask for help when I needed it. I never felt any competition between my peers. On the contrary, we often ask each other for advice. During my time here, I have developed some true friendships and I find the feeling of being a part of the team very motivating.
I joined EFC a few years ago through the graduate programme. As a student, I was looking for a career in consulting with a focus on analytical skills, and EFC proved to be a great fit.
I have been interested in finance since university. Therefore, I work mainly on projects involving valuation of assets such as companies, trademarks and patents in legal disputes. That being said, the projects I have worked on have been very diverse and on each one, I learned about a new industry or explored different approaches to valuing a business.
I really get the sense that my coach and my managers care about my development; whenever I have wanted to work on a particular project, with particular people, or develop a specific skill, they have made a real effort to accommodate that. For example, I wanted to work internationally and I’ve been given the opportunity to join our rapidly expanding Dubai team on a secondment. My colleagues from London are often seconded to other offices in our international network, including Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, Paris and Cape Town, and the list continues to grow.
Because of the quick pace at which we develop our skills, EFC offers great opportunities for fast career progression if you perform well. Most people are initially promoted every year and high performers are can progress even quicker.
Project: Assessing losses of a solar plant following regulatory changes.
Background
In the early 2000s the European Union and many individual European governments realised the need to drive rapid development in the renewable energy industry to address the challenges of climate change. Many renewable power schemes, such as large-scale solar, need big upfront investments, but typically the market price of electricity has been too low to justify this investment. To solve this, many countries offered favourable subsidies which included a guaranteed fixed price the government would pay for any electricity produced by the plant. This price was significantly higher than the market price paid for conventional energy.
In some countries, the subsidies were significantly more popular than the governments expected, and green energy industries developed swiftly. As a result of this expansion and some other factors, the price of solar panels decreased dramatically and it became apparent that governmental support may not be needed. Facing the large, unexpected cost, which might have to be passed on to energy customers, some governments cancelled or amended their support schemes. They did this retroactively, meaning that investors who had already incurred high initial costs, expecting to be able to use the support schemes, suffered losses.
Our client was one of the affected investors. Soon after the solar plant was completed, the government started reducing the previously guaranteed price at which they would buy its electricity and imposing other additional costs. Our role was to estimate the impact of these regulatory changes on the value of the business to assist them in seeking compensation from the government.
My role
My role was to act as the bridge between the high-level conceptual thinking and client management done by more senior managers and the fine detail of the work being performed by Consultants on the project. This requires combining the ability to see the big picture along with strong attention to detail.
I have been involved in the project from the start up to the final stage of the case, a court hearing where an FTI expert gave evidence. Initially, it was crucial for us to understand the solar energy industry and the business of our client. I directed the team to research the renewable energy sector, helped draft initial information requests to obtain the data we needed, and helped develop the approach the team would use to analyse the data we received.
I was then responsible for building a large model which valued the business with and without governmental support to calculate the impact of the regulatory changes on its value. This model was used in all phases of the project and it was my responsibility to update it when new facts came to light.
In the later stages of the project, as I gained more experience, I was involved in writing sections of reports submitted to the Tribunal explaining our analysis and our conclusions. I also helped the FTI expert prepare to give evidence in court and got to attend proceedings to assist the legal team with any issues that came up during the hearing.
I really enjoyed working on this project, not only because I am interested in renewable energy, but also because I got to work with a fantastic team that taught me a lot!