PASSPORT, A RUSSIAN LANGUAGE DEGREE AND A WILL TO TRAVEL

Rachel Lawton, Director/London Audit and Assurance, Mazars

No one in my family has any connection with shipping – the nearest we got to ships when I was growing up was on the ferry from Hull to Rotterdam for our holidays in Austria. I have now travelled from Seattle to Kamchatka all for shipping.

Having qualified as a chartered accountant in a small firm in London (ACA in the UK/CPA in the US) I decided to look for a job that would potentially use my Russian language degree. The Soviet Union had collapsed in the 1990s so I thought there may be an opportunity to combine the two very different skills into one job. Literally, the day after I spoke to a recruitment agency, I had an interview for Moore Stephens and on 23rd August 1994, I boarded my first flight back to Russia for work. Having been a student in the Former Soviet Union (FSU) I knew what to expect in terms of what to pack – travel kettle, soft toilet paper etc. I joke not.

The first project I worked on was for an EBRD project for a river tanker shipping company in Samara on the river Volga. In order for the company to obtain funding for new tankers, financial information needed to be provided in an understandable format for Western lenders, not the Russian tax authorities. Thus began a decade of regular trips to various cities in the FSU. Shipping clients represented the full spectrum of the industry from river oil tankers, containers, chemical, cruises and even fishing (in the Crimea and Kamchatka). Two weeks in Cyprus in Spring was also very welcome –head office in Moscow and operations in Limassol.

Over the years I have been called a spy and wrong information was provided – once the company realised that the loan would not be provided, we were given the correct details. We were often provided with a driver by the company we were visiting – on one trip this driver was a member of the FSB (previously known as the KGB) who was questioning the client daily as to why we were there and what we had been requesting. Other memorable times were being offered brandy at 10 am, being considered to be the secretary (not lead of the team), seeing the midnight sun on the Baltic and being taken out on boat trips on the Black Sea and the Volga. I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.

Eventually, Moore Stephens asked me to move to Moscow to run the office. After 3

years I moved to another audit firm and have now been at Mazars for 15 years. Traveling continued to Georgia, Russia and Kyrgyzstan working on very diverse clients including wool producers and steel plants.

I first joined WISTA when working for Moore Stephens – often I was the only woman at networking events until I was introduced to WISTA.

Now my travelling days to Russia have significantly reduced – not helped by Covid but Mazars has a large office in Moscow and Russia has developed and trained local auditors so expats are not needed as much.

I still work with shipping clients in London but more with brokers and support other teams working in the industry such as valuations and internal audits.

I have been the Treasurer for WISTA UK now for a number of years and looking forward to LISW 2021.

Photo Credit: She of the Sea