ICAS’s top Scottish accountants under 35 in profile – Mark Anderson, UK Operations Analyst at ConocoPhillips

Thirteen Scottish-based accountants have been named among ICAS’s 35 Chartered Accountants (CAs) under 35 for 2017. For 13 days Scottish Financial News will be profiling each of the Scottish representatives.

Today we profile: Mark Anderson CA, 32, UK Operations Analyst, ConocoPhillips in Aberdeen, who is nominated in the innovation and technology category.

Mark qualified in 2011 with PwC in Edinburgh. At PwC he worked for two years in the Assurance department, focussing on Financial Services clients, and two years as part of the Deals time, specifically Business Recovery Services.

He joined ConocoPhillips in 2013 and has been in his current role as the UK Operations Analyst since 2016. At the start of this year, Mark initiated and led a new cost management initiative to improve visibility and accountability within Cost Management to eliminate waste and optimise costs.

I qualified in 2011 with PwC in Edinburgh. At PwC I worked for two years in the Assurance department, focussing on Financial Services clients, and two years as part of the Deals time, specifically Business Recovery Services.

I left PwC as a Senior Associate to join Accenture on their Talisman-Sinopec (now Repsol-Sinopec) contract in Aberdeen at the end of 2012. I worked firstly as a Joint Venture Accounting Supervisor and then as a Business Analyst before leaving to join ConocoPhillips at the end of 2013.

The oil and gas industry has always appealed to me due to the global career opportunities, the complexity of the production process and the global reliance on the industry.

My roles at ConocoPhillips have been Joint Venture Accountant, Joint Venture and Business Analysis Supervisor and UK Operations Analyst. I started my role as the UK Operations Analyst in September 2016. This was a new role whose purpose was to provide more support and leverage existing finance resources to our Operations department to ensure that costs were optimized. The role has developed as I’m now also heavily focused on continuous development, specifically with Cost Management and the supporting IT tools.

The CA qualification has given me the opportunity to work in a variety of interesting and challenging roles. The CA qualification has provided me with the confidence to challenge the status quo and to think about the big picture when presenting management information or business discussions”