The world's attention will be focused on the 2012 Olympic Games in London in late July as 10.8 million ticket holders, 15,000 athletes and 21,000 media pros gather in the U.K.'s capital. But for Neil Wood, CFO for the committee organizing the London Games, the months ahead represent the culmination of almost a decade's hard work. Wood's journey to the 2012 Games started nine years ago, when he worked at Deloitte as an audit partner. "Back in 2003, when it was decided that the bid would go forward, the London Development Authority (LDA) put in £10 million for a part-financed bid and said it wanted to nominate someone as the CFO," says Wood. "The LDA invited the big accounting firms to put forward a candidate for the role. I was looking for something big and interesting to do, and I was put forward by Deloitte."

It turned out to be a complicated process, but Wood was appointed CFO of the London 2012 bid, and when the bid was successful in July 2005, Deloitte agreed to extend his temporary posting to the organizing committee, enabling him to stay on as CFO.

Set up in 2005, the London Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) is the private-sector company responsible for staging the games. It sits alongside the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA), a publicly funded body tasked with setting up the required infrastructure.