Roeland Wierbos

Dear members of FSG,

My name is Roeland Wierbos. I am 46 years old and after a few years in financial audit for EY I have worked almost 18 years for Besi, an AEX stock listed company active in semiconductor equipment industry. I have worked there in several financial roles including 3 years for the subsidiary in Singapore to help set up the accounting and treasury department over there. Most recently I was Director Treasury.

In Groningen I have completed the master in business economics in 2002. During my time at university I served as treasurer in the RISK board of 2000-2001.

First of all, I had a great time working so intensively together with my fellow board members for 1 year. As a treasurer I was involved in all kind of activities which have been an excellent first exercise for my later job, like planning & control cycle, accounting, reporting, audit and treasury .

At the beginning of the board year, we had to work with each other on all the planned activities and I had to prepare and manage the budget. During the year I had to develop my accounting skills and book all the revenues and expenses in our system. At the ‘ALV ‘  I then had to report the financial statements to the always critical RISK members and prepare myself for their difficult questions.  Same way I later prepared the financial statements which are discussed in the annual shareholder meeting of Besi.

This also was my first experience with real deadlines and I recall that I had to work late at night to finalize the numbers for the RISK auditor’s.(‘Kascommissie’).

Another skill which I first encountered is saying ‘no’ to requests for expenditures and play the tough guy, which was especially difficult as we were a cash rich association back then already. This was however the first time that I was responsible for safeguarding a significant cash balance and manage the cash flows.