Nottingham Finance student wins national 'Future Chief Financial Officer of the Year' award

Nottingham University Business School student Molly Ashton (BSc Hons Finance, Accounting and Management) has scooped the prestigious 'Future Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the Year' award at the national TARGETjobs Undergraduate of the Year event recently held at Canary Wharf.

The prize, sponsored by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), is a trip to Europe visiting some of ACCA's key offices and meeting CFOs of major organisations. Molly was one of 120 undergraduates who were invited to the final in Canary Wharf where the winner was announced.

No stranger to Europe, Molly travelled across the continent and worked with Boots to gain a pharmaceutical qualification during her gap year. She currently writes a blog, which has enabled her to interact with various companies and has gained over 12,000 views in the last year alone. This summer she will join PwC as one of their Assurance Interns in the East Midlands office. In her spare time Molly works part-time providing maths tuition. She also enjoys riding as part of the Nottingham University Equestrian society and has recently been appointed the treasurer for the massage society.

Molly came through a series of online tests, application forms, interviews and assessment exercises to emerge as the winner of the award beating off competition from a very strong field of excellent students from top universities including York, Birmingham, University College London, Durham, Cardiff, Warwick and Imperial College.

The Future CFO of the Year award was one of twelve presented on the day with each award sponsored by a top graduate recruiter i.e: Mars, Laing O'Rourke, E.ON, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Gazprom, Rolls-Royce, L'Oreal, ACCA,  Mayer Brown, The Bank of England, Expedia and Civil Service Fast Stream. Molly collected her award from event host Fiona Bruce and Mark Cornell, Market Director for Western Europe and North America at ACCA.

Reacting to Molly's achievement, Alistair Bruce, Dean of Nottingham University Business School said: "This is a fantastic news story for Nottingham and the Business School. It is a clear demonstration of our ability to nurture both academically gifted students and rounded individuals with the personal skills that recruiters want."