In the first of our interviews on the financing scene for independent oil & gas companies, Ross Stewart Campbell (RSC) talks to Steve Mills (SM), Head of Oil & Gas at RBS until 2007 and since then a trainer in project finance and the CEO of Abbotwood Limited.
RSC: Steve, welcome and thanks for agreeing to talk to us. If my maths are right you had something like a 30-year career in banking before you left to establish Abbotwood.
SM: That’s right Ross. I worked first for the HSBC Group, had a spell of a few years in a corporate finance advisory “boutique”, which I helped to establish and then went to Sumitomo Bank as it was then. I then had a brief period with Commerzbank before moving to RBS where I became, as you know, Head of Oil & Gas Project Finance in London. The RBS job was definitely the most interesting and challenging role I have ever had.
RSC: So why leave the world of investment banking to pursue a career in business training?
SM: A work-life balance issue I suppose. I had always enjoyed training and mentoring and I wanted to see if I could make a second career out of it. I wanted to spend more time with my family too before the kids left home.
RSC: Where is your work coming from Steve and how significantly did the financial crises and market downturn affect your business?
SM: I suspect I’ll answer the first part of your question as we go along but let me address the second part first because I think it is probably of more interest to your readers. There has definitely been an impact because the raising of debt finance has become harder. As I’m sure many of your readers know the crisis caused a dramatic shrinkage in bank debt capacity. Some banks who were formerly big market players have been taken over by others so the number of sophisticated lenders has gone down. And there has been a degree of retrenchment on the part of some institutions to markets closer to home. Companies of course still need to raise finance but the banks are no longer beating on the doors of borrowers. We’ve witnessed bank credit processes slow down a bit and credit committees are more difficult to predict. For a couple of years now we’ve been out of the liquid…
