José Serrao Zappa: Leading accounting strategy for companies in distress

José’s journey

I previously worked in a Brazilian private equity firm – Legion Holdings – founded in late 2016 and focused on companies in distress. I was in charge of the Accounting (preparation of the official statements and a variety of internal reports) and the Corporate Treasury (FX transactions, hedge, fixed income assets and stocks trading). Before Legion, I worked for two years in investment banks as an accountant, being heavily in contact with external auditors, regulatory institutions (the Brazilian Central Bank and the Department of Federal Revenue of Brazil) and traders (mostly corporate treasury).

Being able to join Legion Holdings at such an early stage of the company allowed me to witness and be part of the development of all the processes and models we used. Experiencing that made me want to understand how these processes were carried out worldwide and discuss ways of optimising them.

Along with that, having worked with companies in distress, it became clear that most of those companies had one thing in common: huge difficulties in extracting key information about their situation and being unable to identify where the opportunities and possible threats lay. During my time on the programme, my company expanded, and the CEO invited me to work directly with him as his Staff. I then worked directly with the board, managing projects that he, as CEO, identified as priorities for the company, also participating in the Executive Committees for strategic decision-making. The Cambridge Executive Master of Accounting prepared me well for my new responsibilities.