Chartered Accountant (FCA). CFO. Advisor.
Help founders, CEOs and boards bring clarity and control to complex businesses.
British educated. African born. Globally trained.
Professional Bio
Edward Johnstone is a Chartered Accountant (FCA) and senior finance leader with over 35 years’ experience working with businesses across Europe, the United States and Africa.
He has held executive and board-level roles in listed, venture-backed and founder-led companies, often at points of rapid growth, stress or structural change. This includes several years as an Executive Director and Group CFO of an AIM-listed mining company, as well as senior finance leadership roles in pan-regional telecoms and consumer businesses.
Edward specialises in turning complex, opaque situations into clear, repeatable financial and operating systems that support better decision-making. His work spans financial leadership, operating discipline, reporting architecture, working-capital control and investor engagement across multiple jurisdictions.
Alongside corporate roles, Edward leads MyBusinessCFO, working in fractional CFO and advisory roles with founders and leadership teams who want more than compliance. His focus is practical outcomes: forward visibility on cash, finance functions that support the business rather than constrain it, and systems that scale as complexity increases.
More recently, Edward has also worked in agri-tech and data-driven farming systems, supporting operators and platform builders to integrate field-level operations, procurement, IoT data and finance. The objective is to enable real-time understanding of yields, costs and profitability rather than relying solely on post-harvest analysis.
Edward is most useful where there is ambition and complexity — multi-country structures, high working-capital intensity, weak historical controls, or a need to professionalise quickly without losing entrepreneurial drive.
Alongside executive roles, Edward is the founder of MyBusinessCFO, through which he delivers fractional CFO and advisory work to a small number of businesses.
The Way Forward
After more than three decades working across corporate and entrepreneurial environments, my focus today is practical, outcome-driven work with businesses facing complexity.
Having operated at board and executive level in listed, venture-backed and founder-led organisations, I have seen first-hand how growth, geography and ambition can quickly outpace systems, visibility and decision-making. My work now centres on helping leadership teams regain clarity, discipline and forward momentum — without losing the entrepreneurial drive that created the business in the first place.
This typically takes the form of fractional CFO roles, advisory engagements and project-based work, supporting businesses through periods of growth, transition, funding or structural change. The emphasis is always on what works in practice: cash visibility, operating discipline, decision-useful reporting and systems that scale.
Alongside this work, I write and publish selected insights drawn from real situations rather than theory, sharing lessons learned from international business, finance and operations through Cooking the Books.
If any of this resonates, you are welcome to read, subscribe or get in touch.
Personal Bio
Edward Johnstone was born in Durban, South Africa and the family moved back to the UK in his childhood. A happy upbringing with a mixture of urban and rural experiences set Edward up for a varied life across Europe, Australia, the Middle East, the USA and since 2004 in Africa. Edward currently lives with his Spanish partner and their two dogs in Nairobi, Kenya and has a teenage son to keep him on his toes.
Outside work, Edward is drawn to adventure and the outdoors — from off-road driving and sailing to skiing, golf and fly-fishing. He has long been involved in the Kenya Rhino Charge, combining endurance, teamwork and conservation. Reading, travel and quiet reflection provide counterbalance.
These experiences inform a calm, practical approach to work and life, rooted in curiosity, resilience and perspective.
