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Ron Bain is CFO of Vaalco Power, a Houston-based upstream oil and gasoline firm with a powerful presence in Africa and Canada. Based in 1985, Vaalco is dual-listed on the New York and London inventory exchanges.
World Finance: You could have been CFO for nearly 4 years. How has Vaalco’s aggressive place modified throughout your tenure?
Ron Bain: It’s been an lively interval throughout which now we have delivered a number of transformative transactions that elevated scale and diversified the asset portfolio. We accomplished a value-accretive company merger with Transglobe in 2022 that noticed us purchase working belongings in Egypt and Canada. Extra just lately, we acquired a non-operating curiosity in a producing subject in Cote d’Ivoire via the acquisition of Svenska AB.
“As well as, we proceed to drive natural progress throughout the portfolio with drilling campaigns, whereas increasing our footprint by including new licenses that present long-term upside potential. All of this leaves Vaalco nicely positioned to consolidate its place as a number one impartial exploration and manufacturing firm.”
GF: What makes this enterprise and business a particular problem for a CFO?
Bain: It’s a really thrilling, fluid, and cyclical sector in which there’s a variety of deal-making, a variety of funding, and the requirement to deploy materials capital throughout the portfolio to ship progress. The function of the CFO is to make sure entry to capital to assist progress aims in addition to work with the finance crew and govt to mitigate danger: for instance, via implementation of hedging devices to guard the corporate in opposition to commodity draw back.
GF: What absorbs most of your vitality and time?
Bain: Most of my time is spent making certain we preserve a sturdy steadiness sheet that balances natural and inorganic progress alongside our dedication to shareholder return. Vaalco is dual-listed in London and New York, so I additionally spend a variety of time participating with our traders and wider stakeholders, overseeing our regulatory commitments to these listings, and taking part in an enormous function within the improvement of our technique and our ESG agenda.
GF: What makes for an ideal finance crew?
Bain: It’s necessary to have good communication inside the crew, so all people is aware of the aims and their respective roles in reaching these aims. I’m lucky to have an ideal finance crew throughout all our areas. I even have an in depth working relationship with our CEO, George Maxwell, having labored alongside him at our earlier firm, Eland Oil & Gasoline, which achieved an excellent exit for all stakeholders just a few years in the past.
GF: What’s the function of AI within the finance perform? How do you see it evolving at Vaalco?
Bain: AI is already in use in finance at Vaalco. We use AI-powered software program to deal with knowledge entry in addition to bill processing with optical character recognition that extracts course of knowledge from receipts and paperwork with minimal human intervention. We carried out a worldwide ERP system in 2024 and are gathering big quantities of datasets via it. With the web of issues and the power to combine meter readings and monitoring gauges, we see machine studying fashions studying and studying from these massive datasets to enhance our decision-making.
GF: What retains you up at night time?
Bain: Financial and market uncertainty, along with an elevated administrative burden through better authorities regulation. My accountability is, first, to make sure the corporate is performing for the good thing about all of our stakeholders. We’ve a variety of workers, so we should reveal that we’re good company residents and oversee a secure working surroundings.
We see ourselves as companions to the host governments within the nations the place we function, so now we have a accountability to the individuals of these nations to ship a constructive influence via our actions. As an operator of material-producing belongings, we should at all times reveal operational excellence and environmental stewardship.