Umar Azam is a finance leader with over a decade of experience driving financial control, planning, and transformation across complex, international, private equity backed businesses. He began his career at PwC, auditing FTSE-listed and private equity backed businesses through periods of major corporate change, including carve-outs and acquisitions. He then moved into industry, supporting the carve-out of a global marketing services business ahead of a later transaction, before joining a listed data and analytics company as Financial Controller, where he rebuilt finance capability and trust after a shared service transition, redesigning budgeting and management reporting around cash and working capital performance. Umar is currently Group Financial Controller at Rafter, a private equity backed European self storage platform built through acquisition across six countries. As the first Group Finance hire, he built the finance function from the ground up, designing the KPI architecture and reporting cadence that underpin budgeting, forecasting, and Board decisions through rapid, acquisitive growth backed by over €0.5bn of external funding. He has led adoption of a modern finance tech stack, used AI and automation to scale finance delivery, and built a high performing international team. Umar is known for combining technical rigor with commercial judgement, building the planning and finance infrastructure that lets fast growing, PE backed businesses scale with confidence.