Niall Byrne, chief financial officer of QIA (Qatar Investment Authority), the country’s wealth fund, discussed from Doha his two-year mandate and his focus on transforming QIA’s finance function to support growth. QIA, founded in 2005 with the aim of creating long-term value, invests in nine sectors: retail and consumer; technology, media and telecommunications (TMT); liquid securities; infrastructure; finances; funds; health care; industrial; and real estate. QIA has total assets worth $526 billion, according to the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute.
Global Finance: When you took on the role of CFO at QIA in late 2022, what were your initial areas of focus?
Niall Byrne: When I joined in 2022, QIA was a very established organization with a strong finance team. We have embarked on a transformation journey to create the latest finance function, which we hope will serve QIA for many years to come.
What I want to do is create a function, a team, technology systems, an operation that can support the future growth of QIA. Deploy the right technology that is scalable, that can handle the growing size and complexity of anything.
We are migrating our core accounting and investment platforms to a best-in-class, end-to-end solution, and this is a huge project for QIA. It doesn’t just affect the finance function, it affects all investment teams across the organization.
Then I need to create time for my team to do new things that add new value to QIA as an organization. And it’s not about cutting costs. In fact, my team has grown since I arrived and I expect it to continue to grow. Now it’s just over 80 people and I expect it to grow to maybe north of 100 over the next couple of years.
GF: Where have you had the most success in QIA so far?
Byrne: The technology journey is perhaps the most complex part of what is happening right now. And we’ve already seen some success there. It is a multi-year journey. As we move into 2025, we will have the basic accounting platform in place. And then we’ll add things that will be much more visible to investment teams, like how we report on performance. We obviously already have a performance management system, but we will have a new cloud-based system.
GF: Are there any security concerns about moving to the cloud?
Byrne: Of course, this is always a focus for any organization. We follow best practices in terms of security that we require from our vendors. We’re doing this in a measured, thoughtful way and making sure it meets all our requirements and doesn’t compromise the security of any of our data.
GF: What are QIA’s main focus areas for investment in terms of geography and industry?
Byrne: Our mandate is to protect and enhance the state’s financial assets and help diversify the local economy. We invest on a global scale, in many sectors, geographies and build strong partnerships with our investee companies, because we are a long-term investor, we are able to do this. We have a diversified investment approach and really focus on sectors that we think will shape the future global economy, such as technology, healthcare and solutions that power the energy transition.
GF: During your career as a financial executive, what have been your best and worst moments?
Byrne: I would say the best is yet to come at QIA. I have worked in many different roles during my career. I was at JPMorgan Chase for a long time. I have worked in front office and support functions, different locations, different businesses. At QIA, I have the opportunity to bring all of this together, leverage all of my experiences, and truly provide value at a level that can positively impact an entire organization. It’s great to be able to do that in such a complex role as the one I have here, and everything I’ve done before basically prepared me for that task.
Leaving JPMorgan after 25 years was a big step, obviously, for me and my family. I wanted that new challenge, a new organization, new group of colleagues, new country and region.
The worst moments involve recognizing when a role doesn’t offer the expected challenge and taking action to address it. And that doesn’t sound like a bad moment, but those moments are actually quite challenging because you have to admit that you’re in that situation and then take action to deal with it.
GF: What would you suggest to a young person aspiring to a career as a CFO?
Byrne: If you’re starting out knowing you want to be a CFO, it’s good to have that clarity. Number one, invest in yourself. I would also be flexible: you can have a plan, but you have to adjust your plan as opportunities arise. If something different comes up, embrace it, because over time, you’ll build a portfolio of experiences that will make you a stronger candidate for bigger, more complex roles. Overall, building your portfolio of experiences is really important. I would also say, be confident, even when you are right at first. Be confident in your abilities, but stay humble, ask lots of questions. Admit it when you don’t know something, it’s okay to make mistakes, but learn from your mistakes. Perhaps the most important thing of all is to do things that you enjoy, that you get pleasure from, because you will do your best work when you love what you do.