DALLAS, TX — City Electric Supply (CES) CFO Phil Flaherty joined the company over 30 years ago. Today, CES announces that he will be taking on the new position of Global Chief Financial Officer. In his new role, Flaherty will oversee the U.S. and UK accounting teams while growing and evolving the financial strategy across the entire company.
“Phil has been with City Electric Supply for over 30 years. We hope to leverage his knowledge and experience, as well as his familiarity with the company, to position ourselves strategically,” said City Electric Supply CEO Thomas Hartland-Mackie. “We are continuously seeking ways to gain more market share globally, and the pandemic has certainly shown us that a strategic global perspective is more important now than ever.”
Hartland-Mackie went on to explain how, through his new position, Flaherty will continue to help grow and evolve the Dallas-based company.
“The intent of this new global role is to help ensure that we have a consistent strategic direction across the whole organization, with the added benefit of leveraging the best ideas and financing arrangements for implementation,” Hartland-Mackie said. “Increased collaboration across our accounting teams will also allow us to be more efficient as our teams share skills, knowledge, and key learnings with each other.”
As CES continues to grow and elevate, the focus will continue to be on the company’s over 1,000 branches worldwide, on a local level.
“One of our continued priorities will be to support the commercial teams and branches,” Flaherty said. “As I work with our local teams all around the world, I believe we can harness the best practices and ideas to implement within our organization.”
Flaherty took on his first position of Office Assistant with CES at the age of 17 in the Isle of Man. Shortly after taking on that position, Flaherty was offered the opportunity to enter the management training program in England. Flaherty then became a Manager in the accounting department in Warwickshire, England. He was later given another opportunity that would take him to Canada.
“I was sent to Canada for a purpose. The finance department was all over the place. At just 22 years old, they sent me to go clean it up,” he said. “When I first got there, it forced me into an uncomfortable position. When I was in the UK, I understood how things were done, but in Canada, I had to take charge of things. In turn, that led me to keep an open mind to doing things differently. But I recall that I also had my fair share of mistakes during that time and I learned from these, too.”
That mindset has helped set Flaherty for continued success within the company. In 2005, he was named Chief Financial Officer of Canada. In 2017, he was named Chief Financial Officer over all North American operations.
“I’m never going to ask someone to do something I’m not prepared to do myself,” Flaherty said. “And because I started at the bottom and worked my way up, there’s not a lot I haven’t done, so that helps."
“I can say that it’s been a privilege bringing people into the business and watching them grow,” he said. “My big goal is to build strong teams. I enjoy working with people and learning from the people I work with. With this new spirit of cooperation between the U.S., Canada, and the UK, we’ll all be learning new things.”
CFO of Dallas-Based Company Lands Global Role
