FEATURE | The Big Interview
Glorious Goodwood: one of the highlights of the horse racing season
Goodwood – and then onto classic
motorsport at the Revival, the closing
of the summer season, which is in the
middle of September. In addition to that,
we’ve added what we consider to be
the opening of the motorsport season –
the Members’ Meeting – which is at the
beginning of March.
“All of those things added together
bring around 600,000 people to the
estate. Each event has a separate identity
which is what resonates with people.
They can find something at Goodwood
which really connects with their
particular passion.”
Williamson, who joined Goodwood as
finance director in 2008 before moving
up to the chief executive’s role in 2012,
has overseen huge improvements in the
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DIRECTOR OF FINANCE
business in that time. “In 2008 we were a
business that was eroding cash because
estates, by their very nature, are extremely
hungry. Whatever we make is quickly
used. There is always so much to do.
“Every tree, every wall, every blade of
grass needs maintenance and so what we
set about doing in the first instance was to
tighten up the way we managed our cash,
our approach to investment, and from
there, once we saw our business had the
ability to grow, we feathered investment
against our profit so we were always
balancing the two with one another.
“It’s terrifying in a way. We have 650 full
time staff, a lot of them outside looking after
the estate. All low margin, high resource
requirements. Glueing all these definable
parts together is a great challenge R
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