Rick Arpin says “Wall Street,” Oliver Stone's 1987movie, led to his career in finance. “When I was in high school, Isaw the movie “Wall Street,” and I thought I would be an investmentbanker,” says Arpin, now corporate controller for MGM ResortsInternational. “But in college, I had an accounting instructor whoinspired me to look into accounting. I ended up with a dual majorin finance and accounting. And from there, the clearest career pathwas through public accounting, so I became a CPA and went on towork at Arthur Andersen.”

After a stint at Arthur Andersen, Arpin joined MGM Resorts in2002. He is responsible for external reporting and accountingpolicies at the $5.9 billion gaming company and also oversees morethan 200 employees in its finance shared services center. Arpin,38, has participated on the teams for deals such as MGM Resorts' $8billion acquisition of Mandalay Resort Group and its $750 millionsale of Treasure Island. He has a B.S. in accounting and financefrom the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

What's been your biggest challenge?
Therecession. I think anyone who works in any industry affected by theevents of the past two years–which is most of us–would have to saythat it was getting through the financial crisis beginning in late'08. [MGM] faced significant financial challenges: we were tryingto build a large resort here in Las Vegas, CityCenter, which facedchallenges just getting constructed. So a big part of the corporatefinance team's effort was raising the financing to see thatthrough. We were able to make some financial magic and raise fundswhen we needed to, and get our lenders to cooperate with us andsurvive that period.

Can you tell me a little about this financialmagic?
We raised $3 billion in the capital markets last year and another$3 billion this year. In some cases, we were able to extend debtmaturities and in other cases, we issued equity to improve theoverall health of the company so that it wasn't such a leveragedentity. It's still probably more leveraged than we want to be, butmoving in the right direction.

What has been your most rewarding project so far?
In terms of magnitude and impact, getting the financing in placefor the Las Vegas CityCenter project has been the biggest. It feltlike all 60,000 employees in the company were rooting for us and wefelt an obligation to get to the finish [line].

What do you like best about your job?
Thebest part of being in finance is the ability to see so much of whatan enterprise does. And the thing about finance over the past 10years is that we've become front and center for the businessenterprise. First it was the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and now it's therecession. It's clear just how important finance is to the overallenterprise.

And at MGM, that's even more the case: our CEO, Jim Murren, usedto be our CFO. He believes in the finance team being a reallystrong team. It's also a very lean group so each of us gets to seelots of things. We're not specialists; we're really a lot moregeneralists.

I was struck by your involvement in corporatefinance–it's not an area that I usually associate with thecontroller.
Yes, that's the beauty of MGM. Both mydirect report above me–the chief accounting officer–and I have beeninvolved in mergers and acquisitions, dispositions, lots of capitalmarkets transactions. So it's been great for us.

How did you get on the career fast track?
It all starts with the career path out of college, publicaccounting. It's by definition a fast career path. At a publicaccounting firm, as with law firms or investment banking, peopleare being evaluated and the good ones are being moved forward.

And since I've been here at MGM, my growth has been the resultof the opportunities I've been given to be involved in so manydifferent areas. Some folks in a public company in a corporatefinance area wouldn't raise $3 billion in capital in 10 years–andwe've done it in each of the past two years.

Did you have a mentor? If so, how important wasthat?
I've had several at different stages in mycareer. One of the beauties of public accounting is that there aremany opportunities for mentorship. My current supervisor is amentor. And our CEO, Mr. Murren, has been incredibly supportive.He's given me opportunities and I have never felt fearful because Iknew he had my back.

What advice would you give newbies starting out intreasury and finance now?
I'll take a step back:When you're in college, I suggest people take one or two extraaccounting classes. It provides a foundation of a lot of what we doin finance and business. And then once you're in a specificindustry, just be an absolute sponge. There's a lot of what we dothat can only be learned through experience. But just try and learneverything you can through those individual experiences.

What finance area now offers the mostopportunity?
The area of systems in finance andaccounting. If you can speak those languages, it's reallyimportant. I think that the area of treasury has been importantover the last few years and my guess is that it will continue to beimportant for a long time after. It helps to pay bills later andcollect them sooner.

What skills are the most sought afternow?
Systems skills–there's not enough supply tofill the demand in terms of people. Analytical skills are criticalthese days because decision-making has to be razor sharp. And alittle creativity helps too these days. Because we're going throughtimes that we've never seen before, and so the playbook has to goright out the window.

What skills of your own would you like toimprove?
About a year ago, I was assigned to headour internal finance shared service center, which is about 200folks. Obviously in my past jobs, I was dealing with a lot smallerteams. Right now, I have some work to do to be that leader whoinspires people, who motivates them, and who gets people to buy into my vision.

What are your goals in the next 2 years? The next 5years?
For the next 2 years, I'd like to see agrowing improvement in my ability to lead the shared servicesgroup. Five years: I love being at MGM. For me, my ultimate goal isto one day be the CFO of this company. And from there, whoknows.

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