In April 2024, Graeme Gibson CA, Chief Financial Officer, was all set to speak at the ICAS Sustainability Summit in Edinburgh when something wonderful happened – his wife Claire was taken into hospital for the birth of the couple’s first child.

The growing demand for credible sustainability information means discussing significant opportunities for finance professionals to help organisations reach their climate goals would have been time well spent for Gibson. But back in spring 2024, his priorities were with his family, and rightly so. Sustainability and finance would have to wait.

Fast-forward a year and a half, however, and with the UK government’s consultation on sustainability reporting standards coming to an end, now seems a good time for Gibson to revisit his thoughts on the importance of finance in supporting and delivering sustainability strategies, the subject he had planned to speak on at the summit. He starts with a pretty serious statement.

“Financial decision-making is fundamental to net zero – it won’t happen without the active involvement of the finance community,” Gibson says. “Historically sustainability has been incidental to finance, but now it’s increasingly at the core of what we do.”

Edinburgh Airport has reduced those emissions within its operational control by 90% since 2019 and is the only Scottish airport to reach Level 4+ in the Global Airport Accreditation Scheme, one of just six in the UK and 50 worldwide to do so. Gibson believes the aviation sector will decarbonise further over time; he acknowledges that will be a challenge but insists finance will play a major role in meeting sustainability targets.

“At Edinburgh, virtually all our emissions come from either aircraft or vehicle movements for passengers or employees getting to the airport,” he says. “Because of this, we can look to control emissions by incentivising airlines to introduce efficient and cleaner aircraft and to decarbonise their activities on the ground, say by avoiding unnecessary taxiing of passengers or using electrical units instead of diesel generators. We also have onsite EV charging, offer incentives for customers to use public transport, use low-energy lighting and have an almost fully electrified fleet of cars, vans and coaches.”

Solar system

Last August, Edinburgh Airport unveiled a major new sustainability initiative – an onsite solar farm, which is estimated to supply 27% of the airport’s future energy requirements. As CFO, Gibson, along with his finance team, played a key role in getting the project over the line. “We had to demonstrate a solid business case to shareholders as there was an upfront cost,” he says. “We also had to identify the potential cost over time of not having a renewable energy source at the airport, and show how much money we’d save each year by having the solar farm onsite.”

Gibson explains that the finance team also had to grapple with an intricate financial arrangement to get the deal done. A quarter of the project’s funding came from the Scottish government, the airport contributed another quarter itself, and the rest came from AMPYR Solar Europe, a specialised investor in renewable energy. “It was a complex business case we had to present,” he says.

Gibson, however, believes that difficulties can be eased if finance professionals use the same tools to support sustainability as they use to manage financial performance.

“Initially, finance helps capture the data around energy consumption and emissions – controls it, ensures it’s complete and accurate,” he says. “Next, we measure our performance, set targets, report performance against budgets and actuals, identify variances and, if we miss a target, work with accountable managers and teams to understand what’s gone on, and [with that knowledge] incentivise and drive performance.”

Education
Studied PPE at University of Oxford, earned a master’s in American studies at Glasgow University

2005
Trained with Deloitte, qualifying in 2008

2009
Joined Tesco Bank as Treasury Finance Manager

2011
Returned to Deloitte as Treasury Advisory, Senior Manager

2013
Appointed Head of Treasury at Manchester Airports Group

2016
Moved to Edinburgh Airport as Head of Finance Projects, rising to Director of FP&A in 2019 and CFO in 2021

2017
Appointed to part-time role as FD of Crosswind Developments

2019
Joined the board of Scouts Scotland, the Welcoming Association and, from 2021, National Museums Scotland

Gibson identifies three other important sustainability roles for finance – supporting decision-makers, making the sustainability case to potential investors, and disclosure. “We lay out the options and data that help support the delivery of our financial plan and sustainability targets,” he says. “That could be demonstrating a financial return to offset upfront costs, or showing the potential cost of residual carbon should the government start holding businesses financially accountable for residual emissions in the future.”

Such data is increasingly important, Gibson argues, as investors have become increasingly concerned with sustainability. Part of finance’s role, he explains, is to reassure potential investors that they’re investing in a progressive, responsible company aligned with their own objectives. This affects the reporting processes. “It’s not just about presenting profit and net asset but also your energy and carbon footprints, and showing what are you doing to manage those risks,” he says.

Vital statistics

Sustainability imperatives make for an increasingly complex and demanding world for finance professionals. But as far as Gibson is concerned it’s also an increasingly rewarding one, presenting many opportunities. “Numbers are vital to the success of a company, so processes and analysis need to be reliable,” Gibson says.

This, he argues, requires rigour and discipline from finance professionals, something he learned during his own CA training. “CAs have to be able to get underneath the detail of a problem, understand it and interrogate the information that’s being presented,” he says, adding that the broad base of knowledge CAs develop during their ICAS training helps them solve problems across different dimensions, not just in one specialised area.

“Financial decision-making is fundamental to net zero. Historically sustainability has been incidental to finance, but now it’s increasingly at the core of what we do”

He advises young CAs to take advantage of opportunities that present themselves, even if that means moving to unfamiliar sectors or other locations around the world. “ICAS training gives you a platform for moving into a diverse range of industries and roles,” he says.

It was a love of analysis and numbers that drove Gibson to become a CA. After an initial eight years with Deloitte and Tesco Bank, he has spent the past 12 working in the aviation industry, first at Manchester Airports Group, the last decade or so at Edinburgh Airport. He has also worked in a voluntary capacity for Scouts Scotland from 2019 to 2022, and currently volunteers with the Welcoming Association, an organisation that helps asylum seekers, refugees and migrants in Edinburgh, and National Museums Scotland.

In each voluntary role, Gibson provides financial leadership, supporting decision-making and reviewing reports, budgets, forecasts and policies. “I wanted to do something with my skillset; I get a huge amount of value from volunteering,” he says.

Between 2017 and 2021, Gibson doubled up on work with a role as part-time Finance Director at Crosswind Developments, a sister company to Edinburgh Airports. Crosswind is the developer behind Elements Edinburgh, which will see 3,000 homes, a third of them ‘affordable’, built adjacent to the airport, on what used to be the second runway.

The development, which was recommended for approval by Edinburgh city council officials in December 2024, will also include offices, shops, a school, leisure facilities and a green urban park. Gibson’s role at Crosswind was to set up the company as a standalone entity “to make sure it has the infrastructure and resources to support its activity”, he says, and to show shareholders that giving up a surplus-to-requirements runway to a property developer made good financial sense.

“The roles dovetailed nicely,” Gibson says. “As sister companies, the airport and Crosswind have the same shareholders and complementary objectives – the airport wants to grow and the development sees value in being attached to a major international airport.”

Working with Crosswind CEO, John Watson CA – formerly both an ICAS Council member and Commercial Director at Edinburgh Airport – was particularly rewarding, Gibson found. “John is an experienced senior leader who has worked across different sectors and brings different perspectives to the roles he’s involved in, which is enormously useful,” he says. “He’s all about growth, delivery, execution and forward-thinking.”

“Airports are infrastructure business. What we decide to do today has a long-term impact that we’ll still be living with in 25 years”

In June 2024, Vinci Airports, an operator that runs 70 airports in 13 countries, acquired a 50.01% stake in Edinburgh Airport. Again, Gibson and his finance team were heavily involved. When, a few months after the deal went through, the airport picked up an award for “private equity deal of the year” at the Insider Scotland Dealmakers Awards, Gibson, who described the project as “an all-consuming focus for the finance team”, was extremely proud.

“It was a lot of hard work over many hard months, a big team effort to get the business ready for sale and support our shareholders through the process, and finance was at the heart of that,” he says.

“The investors were doing an enormous amount of due diligence and finance was expected to demonstrate a business plan that was deliverable and credible, and to generate confidence in the plan. It’s easy to set out some numbers, but much more difficult to get someone to believe them.”

Twelve years in, Gibson is still excited by working in aviation, a major sector that he says has changed radically since he started at Manchester Airport in 2013, and which he believes will continue to evolve. “Airports are infrastructure business. What we decide to do today has a long-term impact that we’ll still be living with in 25 years,” he says. “We need to make sure decisions are future-proofed, reasonable and pre-empt what might change with society, business and industry over time.”

He believes the airport has the potential for more growth. That’s more airlines, more passengers and more opportunities for people outside Edinburgh to enjoy what Scotland has to offer. And finance will be central to ensuring that this growth is sustainable – whether that’s supporting the decarbonisation efforts of the wider aviation industry, outlining financial implications for airlines, lobbying decision-makers or collaborating with new partners. “It’s important that finance is recognised as a business leader rather than just the custodian of management accounts,” he says.

So, with work looking busier than ever, volunteering commitments and a family to consider, Gibson has a pretty hectic schedule. How does he manage it? “With difficulty,” he laughs, before adding, thoughtfully: “You have to maintain clear boundaries between home, work, voluntary work and other elements of your life. Focus on where you can add value, and always ask yourself, is what I’m doing helpful?”

edinburghairport.com

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