Finance Monthly - January 2022

Bus i ne s s & Economy 26 Finance Monthly. Dirk Kahl Lidl From on COVID-19 and the Future of the CFO Function Dirk Kahl is the new International Board Director and Group Accounting Officer of Schwarz Dienstleistungen – the parent company of Lidl, Kaufland, Schwarz Produktion and PreZero. Having spent the past seven years as the CFO of Lidl GB, he was also one of the winners listed in our 2021 Finance Monthly CFO Awards. Dirk joined the Lidl Group as Global Finance and Accounting Director in 2008 and was subsequently appointed as Board Executive for Finance, Accounting and Tax for the German operation before joining the UK Board of Directors in 2014. In his role as CFO, Dirk was responsible for the Financial and Administrative operation of Lidl in Great Britain. He’s held other retail CFO roles before and serves on the Board of Kingston University, London, as the Chairman of the Audit and Risk Committee. Prior to joining Lidl, Dirk has worked for KPMG out of Frankfurt, Shanghai and Singapore as a Qualified Chartered Accountant for almost ten years. We caught up with him over the next few pages to talk about COVID-19, big data and machine learning’s impact on the CFO function and his goals in his new role.