The ideal finance director makes it easy for investors, builds relationships and isn’t too possessive, according to Paul Lee from Hermes Private Equity.

The scene is all too familiar: you arrive home after a week’s travelling late on Friday night. You spend Saturday tired, tetchy, opening the week’s post, paying bills and trying to catch up on the family’s news. On Sunday, you’ve barely got time for a glance at the papers before it’s off to the airport again.

A company’s brand is invaluable. The internet is a fantastic medium for promoting a brand. But it is also a forum in which damaging information spreads like wildfire.

If you’ve got a product that’s in any way sexy, you can be assured it’ll be one of the top subjects for discussion when you’re talking to journalists.

Working with an entrepreneur can present a different set of challenges to working with a CEO who doesn’t have an emotional attachment to the business.

Communication with your finance team is no doubt harder when members are spread around the globe, although AES Engineering FD Neil MacDonald doesn’t seem to mind.

Communication has to be at the heart of every strategy, says the new FD of T-Mobile UK, Lars Nordmark.

Online business communities are getting bigger by the day. One community for FDs to join is Viadeo, which has more than 1.3 million members across Europe.

A growing number of FDs are telling us they're appointing officers to better communicate the company's environmental policy to staff.

The better a company communicates its position to the market, the better it will be able to handle the credit crunch, says Siemens Financial Services FD Steve Mason.